At the turn of the millennium, queer folk everywhere tuned in weekly to watch Queer as Folk. In Season Two, the character Ted, maybe a little older, a little shyer, a little less gym-my than the rest, has a Pride to remember when an absolute god of a man picks him up from Babylon and takes him home for the fuck of his life. Ted of course is head over heels with excitement (after a night of being heels over head), because men like Troy, played by Lee Rumohr, do not take home men like Ted. Small wonder Ted is smitten and begins to plan a future for the two of them. Poor Ted, though. It turns out Ted is just Troy’s Pride Pity Fuck of 2002. Every year, the character explains, he finds a guy like Ted, a guy he would never normally look at, and gives them a gift: himself.
This wasn’t a new concept for me. One of the first rules I’d been taught by my gay elders at the time, back then in my days as a towel boy at the baths, was: every so often, when you’re young and hot, do a troll, because one day you’ll be a troll and want someone young and hot to do you. This was basically what Troy was doing. 2002 Me got this, especially given the character’s name was Troy; in 2002, they were always a Troy, or a Chad, or a Kyle, these shiny happy gay gods.
Back then, I wasn’t a Troy, that’s for sure. As Arnold says in Torchsong Trilogy, I’ve been young and I’ve been beautiful but never the twain have met. But I was, then, young, at least, and being an older gay man in a world of hard bodies and youthful stamina was a concept still unfathomable. Now, 2002 is a long time ago, and young is a word few would use to describe me, without a great big 90s NOT at the end. Troys become Teds, thats the inevitability of aging.
Now, on Queer As Folk, a few seasons later, Ted got his revenge on Troy, when the tables got turned, and Troy didn’t recognize him, and took him home, and it was Ted’s turn to break the heart. The irony there was that Troy had developed real feelings, a pure karmic comeuppance for a character written for us to hate, even as we yearned. (Yearning, I was recently told, is my gayest characteristic, and it’s defintiely true. I’ve been a yearner from the earliest days, when the focal point of that yearning was a girl with the golden curls named Cori; Cory, of course, is also one of those shiny happy names of 2002, which goes to prove Shakespeare’s what’s in a name?)
What prompted this early morning blog? Was it simply the Facebook memory reminder that on this day in 2022, an early morning Grindr message was brought to me by the miracle of Pride? I don’t remember who it was from, but clearly someone hot, someone, as we used to say, “out of my league.” Pride brings out the horniness, but it also brings out the loneliness. We are all looking for connection, even if its ephemeral and superficial; I’ve had intensely intimate connections that only lasted until sunrise.
In the meantime, whatever the shiny happy names of 2026 are, it’s Pride and I’m not too proud to not be available for your Pride Pity Fuck of the season.
