Summer Solstice

Yesterday I volunteered at the Fremont Fair for a teen crisis line. As a volunteer, I was supposed to pass out little booklets called "Where to Turn" guides to teenagers who looked like they needed some help. The "Where to Turn" guides are filled with information for teenagers who are homeless, gay, or trying to move out of their parent's house. They contain numbers for national support lines, homeless shelters, and local planned parenthoods. On the booklet are soft-focus of teenagers looking pensive and turning their heads in different directions.

I grabbed a pack and started walking through the throngs of festival-goers.

"Do you want a teen resource guide?" I asked a teenage girl with a pacifier around her neck. "No," she responded.

I decided I'd try a new tactic. Daemond had given each of us candy to give out along with the resource guides, and I decided to emphasize the candy part of the transaction. "Free candy?" I asked a Latino couple, and then handed them a few jolly ranchers along with the teen resource guide. "What's this?" "Oh, you know, resources." The man shrugged and walked on toward the kettle corn. Then he flung the guide into the trash.

There really weren't a whole lot of suicidal-lookin' teenagers at the Fremont Fair. I was most concerned about a homeless man with a sign that said "losing will to live." If only the teenagers were so transparent.

"Would you like a teen resource guide for your daughter?" I asked a mother when her daughter turned to look at tie die shirts. "Uh, no she's fine," she responded.

"What if she's preggers and she's not telling you? What if she's a gay?" I wanted to ask, but I didn't.

Offering teen resource guides to parents felt like an inditement. "You obviously don't know how to be a parent," the guides said. "Otherwise your daughter wouldn't be calling a hotline to ask questions about chlamydia..she'd be talking to you."

I sat back at the teen link booth, and a chinese boy ran up and stole all of our tootsie rolls. Then another family came by and the son asked his mother if he could have a piece of candy. "No," she responded, and the boy hung from her arm, comatose. Need mah sugah fix.

I volunteered with a very nice woman. Ilana, her name was, or Julia. Halfway through her shift, she excused herself to walk her dog. When she came back, her cheeks were red and she looked mortified.

"My dog sprayed diarrhea all over the ground," she said. "In the middle of the street, next to people. I had to ask like five people to help me clean it up."

Her dog looked up at me. She looked almost as mortified as Ilana (or Julia).

"Oh, no," I said, "That's terrible, but at least the poop didn't hit a baby or anything, you know," and I laughed. Ilanulia didn't laugh. It wasn't funny yet.

"This fair sucks. No one is taking our Teen Resource Guides, the sky is the color of a dentist's office, and your dog almost shat on a baby's face," I said aloud, to no one in particular.

I thought a blanket condemnation would make both of us feel better. I thought it would allow us to dismiss our circumstances, but it didn't. As I looked out at a naked biker man covered in blue and gray paint, a man gyrating in assless chaps, and a happy little girl eating a hot fudge sunday, I just felt like a bitter old fag.