I know it's hard to believe, since I'm basically a drag queen trapped in a straight woman's body, but I have never been to Pride in any city I've lived in - until yesterday. I popped my Pride cherry in a big way by dancing on Fighting Chance Productions' float to promote their latest show, bare: a pop opera (which I've been blogging about here), a drama about two private school boys' torrid love affair.

Because bare takes place in a Catholic school, our costume direction was to dress like school kids. I jazzed up my black skirt and white button down shirt with a red bra, pink flower belt, purple hair flower, and of course, my beautiful 5 inch lilac stiletto motorcycle boots from John Fluevog.

It looked like it was going to rain, but as we gathered in the staging area at Burrard and Robson, the sun miraculously came out (pun intended). Slowly we started to make our way down the parade route, show tunes blasting from our float as we danced (on and off the float) and handed out promo cards for bare to the cheering, dancing, costumed (or naked) crowd. I danced and sang the whoooole way - from Burrard and Robson to Pacific and Bute. That may not seem very far, but it is when you're shakin' your bootie in heels. We were pretty much all sweaty messes by the time we got to the end of the parade route. The poor kids from the bare cast had to go right to a sitzprobe and run-through, while my friend Brandy and I had the luxury of heading for the festival at Sunset Beach for treats and a sit-down.

I loved the atmosphere at Pride. There were all nature of people there: LGBT, not, old, young - it really felt like an all-inclusive festival. This made me wonder how the LGBT crowd felt about the fact that their day had become co-opted by the wider community as a day of celebration, but honestly, I was happy to be a part of it. It felt like we were all celebrating our right to be individuals - and isn't that what it's all about? Now if we could just put that idea of universal acceptance into practice everyday, in all aspects of our lives... think how awesome (and sexy) the world would be if every day was Pride day.

Waiting in the staging area to begin. We realized when we got together in a big group that we kinda looked like we were the ensemble from The Book of Mormon, not Catholic school kids.