As I was slapping on the rest of my lipstick and checking to make sure nothing was either hanging out, or about to hang out, I caught myself in the mirror. I stood in my bedroom in the full length mirror and said very quietly:

“I can’t believe this is happening.”

I was asked about a month ago to be the Grand Marshall of the Gay Pride Parade in Chicago where I spent almost 30 years in theatre and almost 7 years in Schaumburg (a suburb located not too far from the city itself). Most of my life has been spent around people from the Midwest. And most of my adult life as I transitioned, had been spent around gay people and other Transgender women. I always claim to have been raised by the gay community, which is probably why I have such an affinity for sequins and purple boas.

I’d blame my neurotic need to clean on the Gays, but that actually came from my mother.

Because of my irrational fear of large groups of people, yesterday was a particularly frightening day for me. Even when I teach, getting up in front of 10 or more students tends to make my knees shake a bit. I also suffer from terrible, almost debilitating stage fright…a fear that sometimes leaves me trapped back stage between a curtain and a very bewildered stage manager.

So, before hand, I asked two good friends of mine (and coincidentally two very *large* friends of mine) to escort me to the parade, and even ride with me in the car flanking me like Diana Ross. I wasn’t exactly fearful of someone coming up and yanking my weave out of my head, but I was more afraid of someone coming up and calling me a phony.

I have very bizarre fears.

Luckily, my friends understand my insanity, accept it, and usually pat me on the head and eventually acquiesce. I owe a lot of favors to my friends. I hope someday to pay them off…in cash.

We arrived at the parade an hour early, and occasionally old pals dropped by the long, white convertible the three of us stood by , shook my hand, said hello, and chatted with me for a while. No one with a gun, or a hatchet, or a confused look on their face as if to say:

“YOU’RE not Ann-Margaret!”

All was going well so far.

I did some quick interviews, our driver got the signal it was time to go, and we piled into the car. Mike sat to the right of me, and Eric to the left as I plopped myself up on the back of the convertible.

The day was gorgeous. Perfectly clear, not too hot, and a gentle breeze occasionally wafting through my sun dress I borrowed from my best friend Honey. Now, if you’ve ever been to Chicago, you know that when I say “gentle breeze”, I don’t mean a normal gentle breeze, I mean a monsoon. They don’t call it The Windy City for nothing. This breeze was so strong, that I think there were times when it blew the brown off me.

Mind you, I was wearing a dress. And because I didn’t want to be sweating in places where it can get really uncomfortable to sweat, I decided to wear very little underwear. I dressed like Blanche Deveraux…without the menopause part. So, every once in a while, as we rode down Halsted street amidst the cheering and the whooping and the cat-calls (a sound I haven’t heard since I was about 23 and a hooker on Belmont and Broadway), I’d have to put my legs in a vice-like shape in order to not get arrested. I looked a bit like a Mime with a bladder problem.

It didn’t matter though. As we drove down the streets, people dressed in shorts and t-shirts, to the Transgender gals in bee hives and miniskirts, to the guys on roofs in leather and assless chaps, to the lesbians on motorcycles smoking cigars and spitting, waved, yelled, barked, howled, gyrated, and pumped their fists into the air. I waved back, smiled back, and screamed right back at them, loving every minute of the freedom, the joy and the excitement racing through us all at one time.

Every once in a while I’d hear my name called out, or I’d hear a random: “Shante!”, and one time, from behind me, I heard a male voice shriek out:

“Schaumburg!”

It was very surreal.

It was as if my life was being played back to me as I rode forward down a street I had lived on in my past life. As though I was driving through my past, and there were voices echoing behind me, on eh sides of, and ahead of my was my future. I couldn’t see what it was, I couldn’t quite make it out, but the sun was shining, and my fingers were crossed.

And then I passed by a clothes store that used to be Club Victoria, the very first place I had worked at when I arrived in the city at 20 years old. The building was the same, with the same shape, the same sun roof, the same alley to the right, and as I squinted to get the sun off my eyes, I could swear I saw us all, all the girls and I, standing on the roof top, waving and cheering as my very first gay pride parade past me by. A drink in my hand, a cigarette in the other and flanked by Daphne, Gloria, Ginger and Diana.

My past.

Yet again, I was faced with my life passing me by and the uncertainty and fear and excitement of what was next.

As we neared the end of the parade, Mike asked our driver if there were ever any protestors. As this year has gone by, and the extremists have gotten angrier and angrier as equal rights have been put into law, my fear grew again. People can be carried away by their own prejudice. People shoot, hit, fight, kick, anything to get the rage out of them. And as we rounded the bend and the end of the road was feet before us, I heard an angry voice over a rickety bull horn:

“You’re unnatural! You’re not of the world, Alexandra! Shame on you! And on the Lord’s Day! A Sunday! Shame on you!”

There was this voice. A lone voice coming from a large man standing in the shade with a sign that read:

“God doesn’t choose.”

He was mad. He was red faced, and cold. His eyes were deep set and in the dark with the trees that loomed above him, he stood there alone trying to drown out the sound of the oncoming celebration. And me, sitting on top of the white convertible, I was ready with my text. I had words for this group of people. Big, angry, large words that I’d been saving through all the months of rejection and political unrest and being forced to be silent while the other side got air time on CNN. I was enraged and I needed to get it out into the open AT these people.

And as I looked around for more signs, I noticed it was just him.

Just this man.

This sad man under the trees on this beautiful day screaming to no one.

I looked at him, took a deep breath and said as loud as I could:

“I’m so sorry. I love you. I’m so very sorry.”

I don’t know why that came out of my mouth instead of the hate, I don’t know why I said that, and I don’t know why I felt so bad for him, but I wanted to tell him how sorry I was that he was so alone.

Just him, the trees, his empty words, and God.

It was a beautiful day, and as we drove home and wind whipped through me, I glanced at the Lake. It was sparkling blue and the sun splashed on top of it. Easy and kind. Boats sailed by, people ran through the afternoon, other cars honked occasionally at us in spirit and in solidarity. I smiled to myself, and said very quietly:

“I can’t believe this is happening.”