Wearing the purple triangle sticker that says "I've been counted!," I start walking with the crowd along the cordoned-off route. Marchers in groups hoist signs and banners: "BSDM Society of Pittsburgh" and "Gay Fathers." The march is a civil action, one of the largest in American history. We chant, march, and wave our signs, but in the end, fun overwhelms us. Even the toughest among us looks like a six year old at a birthday party.

I feel a strange euphoria, too. Most people will never be surrounded by thousands of others all saying, "I accept you, your difference is positive." Everyone is shouting, "We're here, we're queer, get used to it!"

The pockets of opposition are small, though tomorrow's newspapers will dutifully run large pictures of dissenters with such enlightened sign-slogans as "God Hates Fags" and "2 Gay Rights: Hell & AIDS." We don't pay them much attention, though couples give each other wet smooches when the woman in the "Homophobic and Proud" T-shirt yells Bible verses at passing marchers.

I walk with my friend Tony, who wears a rainbow flag pinned to his shirt and rainbow pins in his sneakers. It seems like everyone here is waving a rainbow. There are more rainbows here than in every video copy of The Wizard of Oz combined. I know it stands for diversity, but as a fashion statement, the rainbow seems excessive. Give me monochroma any day; let my pride emerge in my actions, not my colour preferences. Though I did really like purple and pink in fifth grade; I wouldn't wear anything else. I had a pair of jeans with purple and pink threads running through like pinstripes. Now I don't even own a pair of jeans, let alone anything lilac. I feel like I'm wearing prism glasses, and when I tell this to Tony, he just laughs and says, "cool!"

Tony's in my class at NYU, "The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Experience: Rewriting Our History," a this-semester-only Writing Workshop for freshmen, many of whose sheltered backgrounds did not involve "queer theory." What we've studied is coming to life here; dyke separatism, gay misogyny, and transgender acceptance prevent complete solidarity among the marchers. One of the march organizers was only reinstated this week after being ejected for an article she'd written concerning the need for women-only lesbian space excluding transgendered women. In photographs, I will see how today's marchers tended to travel in packs of women or men. But right now, I can only see those immediately around me, a mixed-gender group who just seem buoyant.

By afternoon, half the marchers are shirtless, regardless of gender. I keep mine on; I'm too much of a prude. I run into a woman I went to high school with, whom I would have sworn was stone straight (though I have no evidence to the contrary now: it's not like they give you a test before you march). We chat for a while as we walk, catch up on mutual acquaintances. I blow bubbles into the crowd and everybody loves it, chases them around. I try to blow a really fat one but it shimmers into nothing with a wet "pop!"

We walk around the AIDS quilt, spread out over a huge swath of lawn on the Mall. Every page-sized piece belongs to a death, to a victim of a disease with no cure and only the beginnings of any kind of treatment. There are men, and more men, young, old, white, black, hispanic. Children, too. It is hard to feel this sad on top of such joy, so the tragedy slides away, though the image of the quilt stays in me as I walk toward the end of the route, tired and exhilarated.

Across the last stretch of Mall, ACT UP, the AIDS activist organization, is staging a die-in, and we collapse on the lawn gratefully. A field is covered with prostrate bodies, evoking a civil war scene, under the cherry trees that bloomed as the Union and Confederacy duked it out a hundred and thirty years earlier. Pink blossoms fall into my hair and over the scattered parade debris, leaflets, cigarette butts, and empty water bottles. I lie spent, not sure what is next, an awkward and sweaty after-moment.

Then everything moves so quickly, and already we've rushed to the buses to return to New York. As the bus barrels through Delaware, the prickly orange sun sinks behind trees and industrial buildings. I rest my head against the tinted glass and try to remember what I've planned for next weekend, if my friend Brie is coming up or not. I'm really sleepy, and my throat is scratchy and dry. My practiced cynicism hasn't kicked in, though, and it feels nice, sitting here, like maybe something really happened.

(2000)