Patrick Robert is currently a high school English teacher in Broward County. He is pursuing an MFA from Spalding University and working on a book entitled Gayborhood. The book concerns the struggles of internalized homonegativity in two gay men during the turn of the millennium and how the landscape of the burgeoning gayborhood Wilton Manors shapes their lives.

It’s not called Gay Pride anymore. The idea of having to be “proud” of something so naturally accepted in our society slowly faded and became passé. Two older gay men stand around the entrance discussing this, nostalgically, noting the futility of those times.

“We were like telling ourselves everything was okay, even if it wasn’t. We were saying, like, oh look how prrrrooouddd we are. It sounds like an answer to a question. It shouldn’t have ever even been a question.”

“Thank God we don’t ask it anymore.”

“There’s no need. No one needs to say that they’re proud. It served its purpose, though, right? It was a question that needed an answer at the time and that was the right answer. Even if most people were telling themselves it more than believing it.”

Gay Pride is now called Gay History Day—a loving tribute to the psychological and emotional struggles of a darker period, and, of course, a celebration of the final victory against those issues. Certainly, the legal battles were the first successes followed by a complete overhauling of the socialization and treatment of gay children. Gay shame is a thing of the past, similar to the Holocaust—something people talk about every now and then in a “remember how horrible that was” kind of way. A thing that reminds people what should never happen again.

Instead of the past debaucheries of Pride Day, with some of its self-defeating behaviors (the drinking, drugging, etc.), Gay History Day focuses on education and remembrance. There’s a festival of lecturers—all Queer Studies professors, discussing the many hurdles that were surpassed and the different social behaviors evolving in gay cultures though all the time periods.

There are a few speeches given by successful gay businessmen and athletes, disclosing secrets to their successes. In the past, they’d be celebrated for being an “openly gay tennis player” or an “openly gay CEO”. No one calls anyone an “openly gay” anything. It’s just assumed and a part of the common understandings of the world.

The older gay men are sitting watching an Olympian give a speech on his rigorous training schedule. When he finishes, they indulge in more nostalgia.

“People were so obsessed with who was coming out or who would be the first athlete to come out or whatever.”

“Everyone just knows now, right, even before they start their career. Like, it’s never a news story. Remember how important those stories were? The announcement, the backlash, the backlash to the backlash.”

“Look at this guy—they did that piece about his husband and their kids during the Olympics and, well, here’s the weird thing, I think it was the first time that I watched something and didn’t even notice that the guy was gay, you know. When I watched that thing with his family I just kind of thought — oh, look at his house.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. I didn’t even notice it until later, at night when I noticed that I didn’t notice.”

“I think I noticed it, but I’m older than you, I mean five years older, but still. Things changed quickly.”

There are no more drag queen competitions—at some point the drag queens came to a revelation: they didn’t need approval anymore. They still perform, though. And everyone loves them.

Pride takes place in the suburbs, a real change from the gayborhoods of the past. Demographics change with the times, and one of the evolutions that came with such a huge amount of increased acceptance was a slow disintegration of gayborhoods. In most of America, no one can point to a defined section of a city where “all the gays live”. In Kansas and Nebraska and some of the other “late bloomers”, there may still be a gayborhood or two, but for the most part the gays are all spread out

After the Olympiad speech, the two old gay men walk around the AIDS quilt, the most grand, historical relic of that nearly forgotten plague. They see all the names and the pieces and one old gay man cries for a second.

“I always forget until I come here. It makes me sad that I forget.”

“Well, no one talks about it. You don’t have to remember it, really. I mean you should remember it, we all should remember it, but we don’t have to.”

They hear behind them two other old gay men complaining about Gay History Day, wondering where “the culture has gone.” They bemoan the lack of a defined community, speaking about the artistic achievements of yesteryears or all the damn money they used to make flipping houses in the gayborhoods.

“I made $200,000 one year from one property. That shit doesn’t happen as much anymore.”

“I know. We used to have more money in general. Remember? Everyone wanted things, as many things as possible, and we accomplished it. We were better than the straights, I truly thought that.”

After the AIDS quilt, there’s not much more to see. The lectures are over, the speeches done. The two old gay men decide it’s time to unwind for the night. As they leave, they can’t help one last moment of reflection.

“Years ago we watched Ceecee Peniston sing that song, you know, the one song that was like the big song of her career.”

“’Finally’.”

“Oh my God, ‘Finally’. Yes. And we danced all night in the streets of that gayborhood and they had all those vendors and all those political organizations. And It was really nice, you know. Fun as hell. And that song! That song was amazing.”

“Most things are amazing. The past thirty years since then have been amazing. If I remember, that year itself was amazing. All the gay marriage stuff really took off then.”

“Yeah. When I was dancing to that song, I remember I knew it was about love or whatever, but that year it was about our acceptance, finally, our complete acceptance was coming.”

They kiss each other goodbye, enter their cars, and drive home.