This is a companion piece to Chipka's fairly recent post, "Beefcake (low carb). The following narrative was written by someone in their 40s (me) who attended way too many Pride parades. Chip and I were supposed to share Pride together, along with several writer friends on the float of a local gay newspaper. Due to a sudden change, we were unable to connect. He was greatly missed. I ended up sitting at the very back on an upper level of an open-air, double-decker bus beside a local columnist and a very nice gentleman from Wisconsin named Dan. Ahead of us on the deck, were zillions of freshly-minted college graduates being perky cheerleaders for one of the newspaper's corporate sponsors. I've obviously become a grumpy old fart because the youthful naiveté and overwhelming exuberance of these kids really annoyed me. I thought back through the haze of time and remembered that even as a young person, I couldn't get that excited about my job. I assumed that they were either exquisitely paid or some kind of brainwashed Stepford Children. The view from the top of an open-air bus isn't particularly good. Every time the cheer-leading squad stood up to do their thing, my view would become totally obscured by a sea of tee shirts emblazoned with the company's name and logo. They'd chant their employer's commercial jingle...relentlessly...like a drill boring into your brain. Occasionally, an obnoxious club-kid, obviously teaking on some sort of illegal stimulant would pop over wearing a bright orange fright wig to regale us with manic descriptions of his sex life. The temperature hovered around 90, with sauna-like humidity and a blazing sun. I'd forgotten to wear a hat. The Stepford Children had consumed all of the water bottles, leaving one sad-looking Diet Coke, floating listlessly in the tepid water of the ice chest. I began to wish I'd stayed home and watched CSI reruns on Spike TV. When you're in the Parade, you can't actually see it. If you're lucky, there is a glimpse of the float ahead of you, and if you crane your neck, there's the one behind. You do see a lot of the crowd: tens of thousands of people, as far as the eye can see, teeming between police barricades and the facades of neighborhood buildings. They're everywhere...hanging out of windows, dancing on rooftops, and decorating paper boxes and light poles. It's surreal to be on a float amidst all of this humanity. You'd sit there on your elevated perch, like Queen Elizabeth, waving down at your public. It's a self-conscious but strangely-exhilarating feeling. The owner of the paper appeared suddenly and passed out a gazillion hand-fulls of trinkets to throw down to the crowd. We did. The crowd went wild. It's always strange to see people practically coming to blows for a chance to grab cheap, plastic rainbow bracelets, beads, and adverts for the paper. I don't understand the wild enthusiasm for these objects. Perhaps it's the excitement of the moment, or maybe in the savage Capitalism of America, people are desperate to get anything for free. Despite my ennui, I was having fun; I saw a lot of cute boys, and made hundreds of pictures. I'm surprised at how many came out because the sun glared so brightly that I could barely see what I was doing. Case in point: when I took this shot, I thought these girls were drag queens. I can see now that they're biological women. I don't know what group they belonged to, if any, but they seemed to have a good time. I do look forward to Pride every year, and my summer doesn't seem complete without it, but honestly I'd rather have been in the crowd with Chip, dodging fake breasts. This photo was made slightly above street level in Chicago's Lakeview area on June 28th, 2009.