Rainbow Vodka Shots of Pride

Instagram: @ericdiesel

As regular as clockwork, over on social media here came the usual Pride month blather about why do we need a Pride month? Where is Straight Pride month? While as a young gay man I was fairly angry and expressed that in a few distinctive ways, I am attempting mid-life to react with reason, compassion as able, to such nonsense. While I will never accede or stand placidly aside where my or anyone’s rights are concerned, and I will always hold bigots accountable for the full weight and force of their beliefs and actions, I also don’t try to convince anyone out of their beliefs any more than I court their approval. I may say something or I may say nothing, but if pushed I push back. What I won’t do is be censored, or silenced, or relegated to the invisibility or diminishment that are why we have, and do in fact need, Pride, both as a celebration and a movement.

You might not know it from the dance music and the rainbow flags, but Pride fulfills needs far greater than partying, though partying is legitimately a part of it. Pride provides both recognition of people across all the gender and sexuality spectra and a safe space for us to congregate. The origins of Pride were not festivity and celebration but safety and solidarity. A profound and damaging, even damning, isolation affected and still affects many lgbtqia* people, which is not to say it doesn’t affect people outside of the letters and pronouns but to say that there are special elements of isolation reserved for us.

My place on the spectrum is as a soft butch but cis gay male, but it took me a while to arrive at this identity. I can honestly say I did not know that this was my authentic self because so much in my life turned me, sometimes quite intentionally, away from my own identity and into others’ expectations or demands of it. So I had to attempt a lot that turned out to be wrong for me or only sort of right for me before arriving at who I authentically am. And that is my right and everyone’s right categorically, and no one’s to grant or accede or, to use one of the worst buzzwords for one of the worst mechanisms of them all, tolerate. Power structures from society to the church to gender roles themselves try to control any moment and every element along the way. And that is why we need Pride, both as a celebration and a movement.

Harm is not acceptable to any person, especially a child. In my case, it would have been so simple to avoid. All it would have taken would have been for it to be okay to be a boy who liked the outdoors and makeup, basketball and show tunes. But one right after another, here came outreaches of creaking power structures, harming a gifted child. My father, from deep psychological disturbances rooted in how his father treated - meaning owned - him, wanted me to “be a man” but was not one himself. Kids aren’t supposed to perceive that, arguably especially boys about their fathers, but I sure did. Church folk after church folk after church folk used our want to make themselves feel righteous by “praying for” us but offered little to no practical, meaningful intercession. That church society was cleaved unto a binary system of opposites, based in a fundamental, unshakable belief that to them was not a belief that a fact, that male and female are opposite and that and only that is true. In that straight and narrow mindset, what is true for them should be, must be true for everybody. But there are infinite subtleties between opposite and complimentary. The binary can cleave in half as easily as it binds together. And that is why we need Pride, both as a celebration and a movement.

And there were those who helped along the way. Some people actually did intercede with food, medical care, eyeglasses. Most of my teachers were dullards, but some were gifted, and some extraordinary ones worked to keep me in school in partnership with school librarians who encouraged me to read and provided a safe space for me to do so. Some aunts and uncles took over a few weeks at a time where we thrived with decent living conditions, schedules, clean clothes. A family fostered me and got me out of the Ozarks and into college; another provided for my transition to grad school. And of course there was my grandmother, whose gifts I can never adequately describe or be grateful enough for or sufficiently pay forward. All did their part, not always perfectly but that’s okay, and so I survived and eventually thrived. The key element as I entered adulthood was my own community, accessed once I got to the city. Gay men brought me into the circle of New York City gay life, helped me understand myself, manage the damage, own my own life. And that is why we need Pride, both as a celebration and a movement.

Pride is an unruly party but it is an awfully fun one, and that, by the way, also is by design. If somber aspects of our history and our living deserve the eternal vigilance of remembrance, then those lives’ sacrifices and that history are to be celebrated as well as mourned. One of the loveliest traditions I've encountered in almost three decades of celebrating Pride is the tradition of raising a glass to ourselves during the March. It follows the Moment of Silence for lives lost – in my ACT UP cell, we called them casualties of our war – followed in turn by yelling them into heaven with confetti flying and flasks and water bottles raised in a defiant, joyous toast. It didn't matter if we were drinking water or soda, Champagne or St. Ides. What mattered was honoring being there and being together, of respecting the past but dwelling in that moment before the parade moved on, taking us and the day into the future, to an afternoon lost to frolic and sunburn, exhaustion and renewal, knowing next year there would be more memories amidst an accumulation of them.

No greater equalizer exists that the Pride march. The June sun shines equally on the colorful sidelines and the lavender center line. From dykes on bikes vrooming at the head of the march to BDSM pups being walked on leashes, from marshals blowing whistles to observers bedecked in Mardi Gras beads, we all share the infectious energy. Pride is as colorful as the rainbow flag recently reconfigured to embrace the infinity of the gender spectrum. That is what the primary spectrum is: bandwidths of color in infinite variations. Pride is an accumulation of memories, a library of lives individually and collectively lived. We were here. We are here. Pride moves us, and the party, forward.

Here is a recipe for a true Pride tradition: vodka shots gelled in a rainbow of colors. It is a longstanding tradition to pass them out, remembering that some celebrants are under age or do not consume alcohol and therefore require a non-alcoholic version. One box of flavored gelatin will yield about ten shots; you will need one box each of cherry, orange, lemon, lime, and grape. Sometimes there are blue flavored gelatins but you can't count on that, so I've also included the option to mix your own. Make these shots a day or two before the big day -- if you invite friends over to help, that's a Pride celebration itself!

Rainbow Vodka Gelatin Shots
Many larger liquor stores have plastic cups for gelled vodka shots; here is a good online source.

Per box of flavored gelatin
1 cup boiling water
1/2 cup cold water
1/2 cup cold vodka

• Remove the lids from ten 2-ounce plastic shot cups. Set the lids aside and place a sheet of parchment paper or aluminum foil on a rimmed baking sheet.
• Pour the gelatin mixture into a large bowl. 
• Gently pour the boiling water into the bowl containing the powdered gelatin. Working carefully to avoid splashing, use a wire whisk to gently stir the mixture until the powder has dissolved and the color has come through.
• Whisk in the cold water, then the cold vodka.
• Use a small ladle to fill each shot cup until almost full.
• Cover each shot cup with its lid. Place the shots in a row on the baking sheet
• Place the baking sheet into the refrigerator. Refrigerate until the shots are set, 2 - 4 hours.

Unflavored gelatin
1 envelope unflavored gelatin
1-3/4 cup boiling water
1 teaspoons clear candymaking extract, such as orange
1/2 cup granulated sugar
blue food coloring

• Measure the sugar into a large mixing bowl.
• Gently pour the boiling water into the bowl containing the sugar. Working carefully to avoid splashing, use a wire whisk to gently stir the mixture until the sugar has dissolved.
• Open the gelatin envelope and sprinkle the contents over the hot sugar-water mixture.
• Cover the bowl with a layer of plastic wrap. Let sit covered for 5 minutes.
• After 5 minutes, remove the covering. Measure the candymaking extract into the bowl.
• Gently use the whisk to mix the gelatin so that it becomes smooth. It may start to set as you work; that is okay.
• While whisking, add blue food coloring, one drop at a time, until you achieve a nice clear blue.
• Use a small ladle to fill shot cups until almost full. Cover and refrigerate as above.

Non-alcoholic shots

• Use 1 cup cold water total for the water-vodka mixture in the first recipe above.

Resources
Urban Bars
Pride Film Festival
Pride Month