Oh, man. Where to begin?

The worst thing about marching in the Pride parade is that you don't get to see the Parade. You get to see it starting to come together, such as this portion of the attractively packaged safe sex message, but you don't see the finished product.

You can well imagine my bitterness.

The organizers of Montreal's Pride Parade put the group from my daughter's bank�employees, their friends and their family�in between the R.O.T.C. and the Gayrobics.

The R.O.T.C. (aka the Righteously Outrageous Twirling Corps) were eight men from Toronto who did a droll synchronous dance/flag routine to disco. Every so often the flags would be shelved, replaced with pink pom poms and a cheerleading routine performed to a hilariously naughty song. There is a word for that routine. The word would be:

Sassy.

Behind us, the Gayrobics (a group of startlingly buff men and women who looked far, far too attractive in their spandex outfits) did a series of aerobic dance moves, and they also had pom poms.

Did I have pom poms?

DID I HAVE POM POMS?

I had rainbow flags. I had a tee shirt that proclaimed my pride in Pride. I had an endless supply of candy necklaces to give out along the parade route. But the question remains, did I have pom poms?

No, no I did not. Even worse, I had three hours to contemplate how barren a life without pom poms could seem. You see deep, deep in my heart I yearn to be sassy. I have now seen The One True Path to Sassy. Clearly, that path is paved with pom poms.

I must have pom poms.

Oh, and not any old pom poms, either. They must be rainbow pom poms.

We will for the moment ignore the fact that I have absolutely no rhythm and thus no ability whatsover to dance or do cheerleader moves. On the surface this would appear to leave me with a crippling sassy deficit. However, I am sure that possessing pom poms will cure all this.

Because I apparently have a deep, unfathomable well of masochism, I had my picture taken with a drag queen. I would be the less feminine person on the left, the woman who has had 53 years to work on the girl thing and yet, somehow, is doing it less well than the man on my right.

If this had been the only queen I'd seen, I probably could have consoled myself with the notion that it was just this one man. But oh, no, it was not to be. Four groups behind us was a float packed with queens. As each of them sashayed past our group in platform shoes high enough to be used as emergency ladders, I had lots and lots of time to reflect upon just how many people of the opposite gender do femininity far better than I.

Oh yes, on top of everything else, I appear to be the female equivalent of metrosexual.

Don't worry. I'll work through my angst. Eventually.

Because this was the first time the bank had participated in Pride, they had us at the parade site two hours before the parade started. Because we were near the end of the extremely long parade, our section didn't start to move until 45 minutes after the parade started.

It was hot. It was humid. The daughter and I hadn't packed lunch because we thought we could slip off and buy something. After almost three hours of waiting, I was hot, tired, hungry and I could feel my cranky coming on. It is a testimony to the joy and energy of all the people around us that once the parade started to move the two hours we spent marching were nothing but fun.

I hope I get to do this again.

My favourite picture from Pride is a simple one. It's two men sharing a casual hug, smiling for a souvenir snapshot for the family photo album. It's exactly the sort of snapshot the spousal unit and I had a friend take of us when we were on vacation in Oz.

I took this picture as I was walking towards my place in the parade, far outside Montreal's gay village, in a place that's not normally safe gay space.

No one would look twice if the spousal unit and I posed like this. But these two men have to be careful where they show even casual affection. Wrong place, wrong time, in front of the wrong people and they could face fists and boots. I guess that's part of what makes Pride such an exuberant time�for a brief period, the umbrella of safe gay space opens wide to encompass a much larger area than normal.

We Canadians like to think that we're a tolerant and open society. Technically, under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, all of Canada should be a safe gay space. We're a long way from there.

The current resistance in some parts of the country to the legalization of gay marriage�even though our Supreme Court has ruled it has to happen--emphasizes how far we have to go before the equality promised to everyone under our Charter of Rights and Freedoms is a reality.

My hope? That once the right to marry is established across the country, once a generation of Canadians grows up taking for granted that a gay couple is every bit as legitimate as they are, has every right that they have, that safe gay space will grow exponentially.

I'm not sure this will happen in my life time. But my daughter's? You know, I do believe she might see it come to pass.

--Marn

Mileage on the Marnometer: 608.08 miles. .
Oh man. This is going to be hard
Goal for 2004: 1,000 miles - 1609 kilometers