A surprise at Pride

Recently I attended Pride with my cousin Roger. Originally, we had intended to only go to see one particular performance, and then we would leave and figure out other things to do. Perhaps see a movie or something. But as seems to happen at Pride, things don't always go according to plan . . .

Midway through the performance, I spotted two familiar faces. One was a guy that I've been Facebook friends with for several years, ever since we met at a mutual friend's birthday party. The other was his friend, who I had met on Grindr last year and went on several dates with (it kind of fizzled out after he got sick and had to cancel on me several times, after which communication died down). I'll call them Tyler and Dan. They were there with a third friend, Ali. All three had been at Pride for most of the day and were already in various stages of intoxication. I'll admit, I had been wanting to hang out with Tyler and his friends for quite some time. Tyler and I live close to one another and I don't have many gay friends that live close by, but all previous attempts to arrange a hang out had fallen through. Now, happenstance had put us in the same place at the same time. The boys were headed to another room of the venue, and Tyler invited Roger and me to come along. Despite the fact that we had come to see the show, we decided to follow them.

Ali seemed to take an immediate liking to me. He complimented me repeatedly throughout the night, telling me I was "so handsome". He was very cute himself. And so, for the second Pride in a row, I ended up finding a boy to tag along with and (once I had ample booze in me) make out with.

Another familiar face popped up during the night. This one belonged to a rather buff guy that I have seen on the dating websites and through mutual friends on Facebook. My only other time seeing him in person was when he was flirting with Roger in a bar about a year ago. Well, turns out the guy is Ali's ex-boyfriend. They seemed to be on good terms though. Although the dynamic between the two of them led to one slightly awkward, slightly awesome moment. Ali's ex had introduced himself to me and was asking me about myself (where do you live, etc.) He then asked, in a rather flirtatious manner, "Where's your boyfriend?" When I responded I didn't have one, he said, "Why not?" Before he could inquire further, Ali appeared and pulled him away. I couldn't hear what he said, but my guess was it was along the lines of "Lay off, he's mine!" It felt good to have two cute guys compete over me, even if they were both drunk, haha.

Roger managed to not drink as much as me (probably because he didn't have someone giving him drinks like Ali was doing for me), so Roger ended up driving us home. Tyler hitched a ride with us, since he lives close by. Dan seemed to be the one looking out for the other members of the group. I always did like him, and was sad that we didn't remain friends after we went out. Well, maybe we will now.

As for Ali, he texted me this morning. The first text was, of course, "Who are you?" He hadn't recorded my name with the number. Unfortunately, he did not remember kissing last night (he had to ask if we had). Fortunately, he did remember liking me, and has definitely followed through with making plans to meet up again. Let's hope I like him when he's sober! I did find out that he's 7 years younger than me, which was a bit of a surprise. I had assumed that he was the same age as Tyler and Dan. I suppose it's not that big a deal. I know I haven't had the best luck with guys in the 22-24 age range, but then again I haven't really had all that much luck with other ages either.

Here's to a fun night out, and a bit of an ego boost!