First, it’s Pride month, so that runs through the 14th through 16th (today through Sunday), the days I’m focused on in this posting. Then: today is Flag Day; tomorrow is what I have wryly proposed as Flagging Day (for displaying your identities and tastes); and Sunday is five special days in one: three date-specific occasions, plus two floating-date events (some of these five are of personal significance to me, others of broader interest).
On Flag Day and Flagging Day, my thoughts from two years ago, in my 6/15/22 posting “Flagging day”:
Yesterday, June 14th, was Flag Day in my country: “It commemorates the adoption of the flag of the United States on June 14, 1777, by resolution of the Second Continental Congress.” (from Wikipedia). I am not in the habit of flying the American flag, not out of a lack of love for the country, but out of a desire not to be seen as a yahoo flying the flag as an aggressive symbol of exclusion for those who aren’t “real Americans” — people of color, lgbt folk, liberals in coastal big cities, artists and scholars, and all the rest of us scum. If I flew an American flag yesterday, it would have had to be in conjunction with at least a Rainbow Pride Flag. But I don’t have the flagpoles, or any place to put them. I do have a rainbow flag draped over the fencing in my entryway, and that’s already up against the tolerance of the condo Homeowners Association. And I display the rainbow flag — and also the Swiss flag — on gym shorts and t-shirts.
I think of these displays on my body as flagging gay and flagging Swiss, with a use of the verb flag — to convey (in my rough definition) something like ‘(U.S. gay) display, on one’s body or in one’s attire, a symbol of identity or taste, with the intention of communicating those to potentially interested others’ — that appears not to be covered in standard general or slang dictionaries (up to and including OED2, though that’s in sore need of updating).
I think Flag Day should be left as it is, but today, June 15th, midway through Gay Pride Month, would be a good moment for (Gay) Flagging Day, using conventions that grew up in the mid-20th century.
The conventions use side of the body to convey your role in sexual acts … and colors to convey the sexual acts more specifically
Here the 2022 posting falls into way-X-rated detail.
Now: the holidays and occasions of 6/16/24. Especially those of personal significance to me.
First, three date-specific events. From my 6/16/19 posting “On this day in 2019”:
Three anniversaries of specific events. From the earliest forward:
— Bloomsday (1904). From Wikipedia:
Bloomsday is a commemoration and celebration of the life of Irish writer James Joyce, observed annually in Dublin and elsewhere on 16 June, the day his novel Ulysses takes place in 1904, the date of his first outing with his wife-to-be, Nora Barnacle, and named after its protagonist Leopold Bloom.
— Ann and Arnold’s wedding anniversary (1962). On this day …, Ann Walcutt Daingerfeld and I were married in Princeton NJ.
— Kit Transue’s birthday (1968). On this day…, my man Jacques’s first child, his son Kit, was born.
Then two floating-date events. Stanford’s commencement (which I remember from long ago with great affection). And Fathers Day, on which from that 2019 posting:
(US) Fathers Day. For some of us, this is a day to remember our fathers with affection. I’m one of the lucky ones; I’ve written about mine several times, most extensively in my 1/30/11 posting “It Gets Better / Wonderful dad”.
It’s also an American commercial holiday that might better be labeled Masculinity Day, aimed at selling things stereotypically associated with high masculinity in either the upper middle class or the working class; elaboration on this point in my 6/10/18 posting “Gearing up for Fathers Day”.
And then through its role as Masculinity Day and through complex associations involving gay men and fathers, Fathers Day is also a high holiday for gay porn, with at least three different themes: sex between father and son; Daddy-Boy relationships; and sex involving older men — called daddies — especially, very muscular ones.
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