16th
In Columbus
My boyfriend plays the mellophone in the city’s Pride Marching Band. It’s Pride Weekend. I’ve never been to a pride event—I don’t have much. I have to walk to the parade, maybe a 40 minute hike, because I’m a hayseed from Indiana and afraid to drive in cities. Even small cities like Columbus, OH, hold traffic patterns and one-ways that confound and terrify me. I’m drinking one beer right now, eating one sugar cookie, and deciding what one book to bring in case the parade is boring, in case the crowds disturb me. I have a Plan B: to duck over to the nearby park and read while eating a donut. I may capitulate to Plan B regardless, depending on the heat. (The heat is miserable right here—the humidity is grotesque; the sun beams all hot crystals; the smell of vomit and trash commingling not unpleasantly, but sexually threatening nonetheless.) I have changed my outfit thrice. My coif is without a savior.
