By Dana Miller

I was yanked from the beach last week by friends who insisted I cruise over to Micky’s on Santa Monica Boulevard for a benefit. It was a fund-raiser for the West Hollywood Water Polo Team heading to the Gay Games in Chicago this month. Those boys from this issue’s cover were dressing in drag and the result was hilarious merriment. (BTW, what do you suppose the budget is for Viagra at Micky’s for those go-go dancers on the boxes?) Anyway, watching the Polo team on stage as well as in the crowd cheering their teammates on got me to thinking about the Gay Games. This wonderful event just breaks down to base with unity, harmony, solidarity, and homogeneity and when the hell does that happen in our community? Sadly, AIDS was the only accident that categorically ever brought the whole community together. The twinks, trolls, bears, leather guys, dykes, drag queens, jocks, and the rest never really hung out. But this month in Chi-town they will. All for a glorious, laudable, extraordinary celebration. It’s not to crush AIDS or stop crystal abuse. It’s not to elect someone or even fight for our rights. Those are stunningly important, but these games are just a moment to celebrate. Almost 15,000 athletes and some 50,000 fans will converge on Chicago to celebrate. My pal Bobby Xydis is on a volleyball team and told me the games, the competition, the camaraderie is all about pushing himself in a positive way. It must be like when we elders unified around the March on Washington, the Quilt, or Clinton, but this is without one ounce of complicated, negative crap. These Gay Games are a much needed fit and festive celebration. From San Francisco, my friend Tom Perrault wrote me: “Dana, finding out that I'm good at softball has been a fun way to exorcise some of those childhood demons and the thought of gay men and lesbians everywhere coming together to announce to the world through sport that we are not only capable but we are talented and gifted is an amazing thing. We will shatter stereotypes. We will come into our own. We will take our place at the table we were denied as kids”.

I asked Bobby the other day what he was most looking forward to. He said without hesitation the opening ceremonies. “To walk onto Soldier Field with thousands of your brothers and sisters and to be cheered by thousands more in the stands. To proudly wear my uniform and march as part of Team L.A. I believe will be a life changing experience.” Those are few and far between. Let’s all celebrate and salute these joyful, proud and exultant athletes!

The sun has been shining with all its might. I love summer. My dog day memories are always halved. It’s 50 percent on the beach running with my pups, baking my skin to look like beef jerky, and 50 percent on the road. For 20 years I traveled with bands to city after city, venue after venue. The show did go on. In some glib moment a few years ago at a swell party I simply and quite honestly arrogantly stated that I had traveled to every state in the union. When a lad much younger, smarter, and, quite frankly, cuter than I challenged me on our country’s landmarks, museums, statuary, rivers, and streams, I knew my assertion meant nothing. I saw airports and arenas. That’s it. Fly in, go to a show, and fly out. In those 20 years I hadn’t really seen anything that truly mattered. Well there was (for 25 cents) a hideous hermaphrodite in fine form in Fargo at a fair. She proudly peeled purple lips apart to reveal the smallest, shiniest, skankiest and scariest penis I have ever encountered. Then he/she proceeded to jack it. Next to me was a laughing dad holding his infant child. North Dakota must be a red state, right? There was also the time at the Indiana State Fair that my troupe and I ventured into the “Madness & Mayhem of Marijuana” tent. This was apparently annually erected to teach the younglings of the "We So Corny" state the evils of weed. What a strange trip that was. Ten kids on display, all with key lights focused on them and sweeping farm-like painted backdrops behind them and all confined to wheelchairs in spasms. This attraction was suggesting that these kids got baked and high and now suffer from the dread of dope disease. It was clearly cerebral palsy or muscular dystrophy, but to the throngs of fair goers … it was pot. Apparently it was a way for the disabled youth of Indiana to make a buck. Or at least their parents. Lord! Frightening, sad, and so damn wrong. If I ever offer, don't book a vacation through me.

At the Abbey a few days ago I ran into my old friend Jim Vellequette. I met Jim back in 1994 at the Aliso Creek Inn in Laguna. It was at a conference for Southern California-based AIDS service providers. I was the brand new volunteer chair of the board of AIDS Project Los Angeles and Jim was an AIDS educator, infected with HIV back in 1991. Jim was quite simply dynamic. He was smart, cute and funny at a time when our AIDS community was bitter, acrimonious and antagonistic. The founders of all of these great organizations were fatigued at that second in history and at that moment there was absolutely no unity among local AIDS service providers. The front line leaders on the war on AIDS from Southern California were at that conference and one by one over the weekend they came to me to rip APLA. We had “too much money, the wrong mix of services, mean staff, an out of touch board.” I heard it all. The AIDS communities hate and/or jealousy of APLA at the time was palpable. And as the face of APLA, that weekend I was the Scott Peterson/John Wayne Gacy of the day. The conference had turned from positive vibrations to how we can destroy APLA. I was a kid in the position for 22 days and was blown away. Jim Vellequette literally saved me from the late author and host Connie Norman, and the founder of the Minority AIDS Project, the good Rev. Carl Bean. He also mediated my chats with AIDS Healthcare Foundation’s Michael Weinstein and hostile Miki Jackson from the laundry service, Aunt Bee’s. These people weren't pissed at me. They were pissed at APLA. But I was the easiest to yell at that weekend. By Sunday, in large part due to Jim's diplomacy, we had reached some level of détente. Over the years that community became more friends than foes. More about that some other time.

A few weeks after the retreat I asked Jim to join the board of APLA. He did and rocked its world. He was young, mad, passionate, positive, informed, engaging, a bit of a wild card, and knew how to play it. Jim had ideas and energy. Jim went onto tons of things but never drifted far from HIV and AIDS. He was an advisor to Being Alive, was an openly HIV-positive model and actor and last I had heard was off to Cape Town to do whatever he could to stop the spread of AIDS in South Africa. So I was pleasantly surprised to see Jim at the Abbey. But I am thrilled to tell you of his new gig. Jim Vellequette is the new chief administrative officer of AIDS Research Alliance on San Vicente. It is a great organization and Jim is like Rocky. He always comes out swinging. He has a glorious, strong voice in this war and, honestly, after some personal musing, I truly believe Jim is an authentic and brilliant champion. Congrats on the gig, pal.

If you are a fan of humor, speed to charlesnelsonreilly.com and check out his brilliant The Life of Reilly one-man show. Charles has been ill for a while which makes these clips all the more sweet, sad, hilarious and pungent. Just like my old pal Paul Lynde, Charles is so damned much more than game shows. The difference is Charles had the energy, humor and smarts to document that.

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Yell at me at Malibudana@aol.com