Six Fags Over Georgia
Clyde and I stand in line, waiting to be dropped, drenchd, battered, and abraded. Despite the number of gays reported to be in Atlanta for Gay Pride Weekend, rumors of recent violence against three gay men result in our seeing no other obviously gay couples in the entire park.
We are surrounded, however, by nearly naked heterosexuals.
They wear as little as possible: tank tops, halter tops, tube tops, shorts. One young man performs the Hiemlech Maneuver of Love on his date, locking his hands together beneath her large breasts and pulling her backward against his bare chest. She responds by tilting her head back and kissing him deeply; each one’s tongue is visible beneath the flesh of the other’s cheek.
Another couple faces each other, hands on each other’s hips. A dark-haired girl stands atop a high school football player’s large feet, and he walks backward with her through the line, swaying awkwardly from side to side. In the line for he Runaway Mine Train, an Afrian American woman briefly and playfully massages her husband’s groin through his OnionSkin (TM) shorts. Waiting to board Thunder River, a barrel-chested young man grips his date by her shoulders, turns her back to him, bends her slightly forward, and goes through the motions of anal sex.
Clyde and I walk up Carousel Hill with our fingers interlocked. An older straight couple, also walking hand in hand, glare and press their lips together in disgust. A group of teenaged boys, arms wrapped around the waists of their wide-eyed girlfriends, hisses, “Faggots!”
We sit near the back of the Chevy Show Theatre, and, when the lights go down, Clyde rests his arm lightly across the back of my shoulders. At the end of our long, low bench, sits a burly, bearded man with his girlfriend’s legs hooked comfortably over his own. He spots us, stares, and urges the other members of his group to “get a load of this.”
Each of them leans forward, their girlfriends hanging, monkey-like, around their necks. They gawk, mouths open. A young couple behind us snatches up three young children and moves to the other side of the theatre … where they sit beside a man whose girlfriend sits between his legs, resting the back of her head against his crotch.
When the show is over, we move from the dark, cool theatre to the blinding glare of the noon sun. The crowd soon swallows our small group of indignant on-lookers.
We make our way to the U.S. Diving Team exhibition, taking seats along with two hundred other people, mostly families with small children. The program begins with a staged interview of the divers. A stooge trades double-entendres with the broad-shouldered white diver, whose small, tight Speedo reveals more than it hides.
The antics of a tall, skinny black diver are designed to provide the show’s comic relief. He prisses behind his fellow diver’s back, goosing him on the butt. As his teammate prepars to dive, the sissy sneaks up, reaches under his friend’s arms, and tweaks his nipples. Before the show is over, the black diver, dressed in drag, twists every innocent comment of the butch diver into a sexual proposition.
Around us, young parents gasp — breathless with laughter. They stand their children on the unfilled seats, making sure they can see it all.
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