“Protect trans
kittens!!!”
“We are homosexuals and
we’d like a drink.”
"Protect trans
children!"
“Queer people used to
live here,” we screamed as we arrived at the Stonewall Inn,
where the riots began 52
years prior.
“We’re here. We’re
queer. We’re coming for your children.”
“10% is not enough,
recruit, recruit, recruit!”
“We don’t want to marry,
we just want to fuck!”
It was the 27th
annual drag march, beginning pride weekend. Each year, our city turned
into a carnival here; up
is down, down is up. The Drag March is our Mardi Gras.
A huge crowd
of queers, faeries,
gawkers, polyamorous hets, gender non-conforming youth,
people arrived
and snapped photos of
each other. For a moment everyone is a star.
My kids came.
Brian from the Church Ladies came in chaps.
Randy Wicker was there,
greeting everyone.
We talked about his days
with Marsha P Johnson and Sylvia.
JC rode Rollerena.
Huck brought wheel
chairs.
More and more elders
were on hand.
So were the youth with
colored hair from the park, not quite ready to assume an identity.
Dean Spade and I talked
about the gender non-conforming youth trying to find a way.
Everyone wants a little
of the free spirit.
It flew through the
trees, across the city as we marched from Tompkins to Stonewall,
as the sun went down,
singing and screaming and dancing along the way, running into friends
we have not seen for
ages.
Huckelfaery Ken welcomed
the spirits… inviting everyone to create a more
inclusive space,one with kindness and sign
language, wheel chairs for elders,
and youngsters from the
park.
The Drag March is not a
professional march.
Its not the women’s
march or heritage of pride, where rules and restrictions and schisms that
impede access or dull
down dreams.
Its open to us all.
The city is open again.
Mary Tylor Moore’s Theme
and Somewhere Over the Rainbow filled the
air in a celebration
of living and being
alive.
More and more joined us,
filling the street in front of the fabled bar, with dancing
bodies,
free for a moment.
You look wonderful
everyone greeted each other.
What a dream.
Waiting for the march to begin, VJ Trans snapped a few shots of Brian, this blogger and kids.