I tried to be vicariously happy, but these were the assholes parked in my spots. Somewhere around here was the creep who’d tailgated me with their brights on up the hill for two blocks. I’d already been driven to tears by these glitter-drenched traffic-jamming stumblebums, and worst of all, there was no way I was going to catch up in time. Suddenly, I was the de facto designated driver on the weekend I was supposed to wind up pregnant. In a city no one should have to drive in, especially when, like me, you’re not really a driver.

Seven or eight of us piled into someone else’s car, which I drove to our Berkeley crash pad, where, as everyone else passed out, I scrounged around for substances to abuse. By the time my edges had fallen away, everyone else was asleep. Story of my life.

I didn’t wake up pregnant, but I did manage to wake up with that not-so-fresh feeling, so it wasn’t all bad. I’d wanted to attend the Gay Shame march, but even those people had to wake up as early as the normal parade people, and that’s just insane behavior. When do these people brunch? Afterwards? Please.

So after brunch, we all drove back into the City. My blood alcohol level was plummeting, so I lobbied for the Lexington, and won. We set up a base of operations. Everyone I wanted to see that weekend met me at the Lexington.

I don’t remember if we left for dinner, but I certainly thought about it. What I remember well, though, is thinking that maybe we should try to see some of the festivities before it was too late.

I suggested this about 5 P.M. It was already too late.

We wandered for a good long while—you know how they like to keep the dykes in the margins—and found what used to be Gay Pride 2002. What we found were trucks dissembling the booths, big stacks of free publications remaining for latecomers, and an ocean of trash. Gay trash.

As we wandered, I became Tank Girl. The city trucks came rolling in to clean, trucks mostly staffed with Latino men; ten percent of which, if you are to believe our own bullshit statisticians, are themselves gay but had to work that day cleaning up the detritus of our collective liberation. And the remaining ninety percent—you know, the straight-all-day-and-all-of-the-night ones? I’m sure that they were thinking long and hard about those LGBT sensitivity workshops which help them confront their homophobia while they shoveled up all of our annual post-queer Apocalypse and carted it all away where none of us have to ever see it again.

It could be argued that they provide a great and necessary service: I mean, really, what if we still had to look at those same neon Queer Nation stickers? Or worse, those "I’m not gay, but my boyfriend is" T-shirts? Good lord, go back to 1995 and stay, honey. Like all fashion, that stuff is fossilized. And regardless, trash men and trash women need to be fully compensated for trying to keep our communities current.

Flash forward almost a year when I’m on staff at a semi-national tranny conference, True Spirit, and we had a few problems with attendees. Some folks got the idea that they wanted to fuck shit up—quite literally—by ramming full rolls of toilet paper as far up the toilet pipes as they can. This stupid trick is on par with many of the yippie stunts suggested by Abbie Hoffman in Steal This Book. It’s totally understandable, in these frustrating times, that many among us want to rail against authoritarianism wherever we can find it, but who among us really wants to be a Rebel Without a Cause?

The end result of this particular kind of attack is that 1) it rendered some of the bathrooms unusable. Considering that most transfolk already have severely compromised relationships with public restrooms, this only compounds an existing problem. And 2) there is no concern in this action for the persons called in to fix these problems. As in most of the hotels I’ve been in these past few years, the overwhelming majority of the people cleaning up our messes in the hotel are persons of color. The overwhelming majority of conference attendees, as in most queer-ish conferences, are not persons of color.

Is the plumbing staff who has to clean up these paper jams going to stick around to see the documentaries on transfolk to become better acquainted with our cultural agenda for acceptance?

Not likely—if it was me, I’d be really pissed off that I had to walk around the hotel full of transsexuals unconstipating their toilets. It’s disgusting job, but someone has to do it, and dollars to donuts it’s never going to be the All Is Forgiven Rainbow of Diversity Plumbers Association.

If this movement is going to get anywhere, we had better get a clear idea of the authority we are challenging. If this movement is going to get anywhere, we had better figure out who is picking up our trash. Think about who will be working to clean up the mess your freedom leaves behind.

So have a happy Pride, if you need to, but please wipe up after yourself and your friends. People already find LGBT folks disgusting enough.

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Rahne Alexander writes and lives in Baltimore, the trashiest city in America. She can be found on the web at www.xantippe.com/ae