On Facilitating Gay Tortoise Encounters during “Nuclear Family Month”
I volunteered for my second time this year at Nashville Pride, during my second summer as a member of Edgehill UMC. For context, I got to Edgehill about the same time as our Pastor Eric, his wife Camille and their son Seamus. I am a perfect fit at EUMC—or at least that’s the way everybody there makes me feel.
I, like many in my church community, have some major baggage around religious organizations (I went to Church of Christ summer camp); I am critical of basically every aspect of our culture and society (I am a sociologist); and I am bad at receiving help and emotional support from others (working on it). Paradoxically, Edgehill is my medicine, and best answer to “what to do” in times like these when the country and state are turning away from its most vulnerable.
A Ride, a Tortoise, and Two Tents
The night before Pride, I texted the Young Adults Group Chat that I wanted a ride; I didn’t want to deal with the parking alone. In the morning, which came far too early, my friend Maddy picked Jazz and myself up. We found city parking for cheap, a good omen.
Upon finding our Pride tent location, we got to work setting up the two tents. Meanwhile, John Feldhacker (our former pastor and tortoise-wrangler) was building the pen for Bill, who stood there unassumingly, as he does. John promised us Bill would “get more active” when it heated up. As we set up, a few people came and stood with their hands on their hips waiting for an invite to visit with the tortoise: an omen of what was to come.
Pride this year was hotter than hell. We were all (me, Maddy, Eric, Audrey, Lindsey) sweating bullets and individually approaching adverse medical events by the time our tents were up. We apparently all ignored our pastor’s request to bring chairs, so we sent Pastor Eric and Maddy to steal some. Eric is pastoral enough that he can get away with things, and Maddy is well-connected enough that anyone witnessing them would assume they were in charge.
Edgehill Pride Workflow
With chairs under our butts, it was time for training (if you don’t train Edgehillians, things could get a little wild). I believe I had, at this point, already started whining about the heat. Eric did his best to prepare us for what was to come: a long line of individuals unlikely to stop until we packed up (10:00 AM-8:00 PM). We were working shifts, but still.
Showtime! Edgehill Gay Tortoise Pride tent workflow goes like this: one of you (likely a gay person) greets the (likely gay) person who has been standing in the line to visit the (definitely gay) Bill. One of the volunteers (in this case, me) will offer to take pictures of everything on the visitor’s phone and generally facilitate the tortoise encounter. Another volunteer (probably gay) asks if the people interacting with the tortoise are okay being posted on our socials—we know better than to out people. So, it goes like that, and it goes and goes. For hours.
The Ministry of a Gay Tortoise
I took photos and facilitated tortoise encounters for a long time. The highlight was probably making an ASMR video of a bunch of pretty femmes rubbing their nails on Bill’s shell (Bill enjoys back scratches). I saw quite a few friends across the duration of my shift. Being at the Edgehill tent at pride, is I assume, what friends of famous musicians feel like hanging out backstage. It’s definitely a special role. You are literally just there to make people happy and to do something whimsical, and that is your service to the community for the day.
Although lots of silly stuff happened at pride, facilitating gay tortoise encounters is somewhat of a serious and heartwarming business for me. During our time under the tent, tears welled up in my eyes a few times. I am even smiling even now remembering the vast groups of people that I witnessed: gay parents with their children, straight parents with their gay kids, supportive aunties (blood and non), glittery femmes, men in tiny shorts, disabled queers with rainbow canes, little girls and super tall women in tutus, you name it. Many of the people our heads of state would wish to ignore or hurt through lies and legislation.
Why I Keep Coming Back
All in all, I like being surrounded, even in the awful heat, by our state’s living, breathing, queers in a month declared by our regressive politicians to be “Nuclear [implied cis-heterosexual] family month.” I believe that folks in our legislature try to disempower gay and queer people because they can see, deep down, the power of individuals who accept themselves, their desires, and their at-odds-ness with society.
I love Edgehill’s sideshow-style tent at Nashville Pride, but you might have to remind me that I said so next year when I’m whining about the heat. As I see it, in this unmitigated train wreck of state leadership, I owe our queer community—at the very least—a chance encounter with a gay tortoise. Especially during “nuclear family month.”