Clueless

C20

They day when I finally got my uniform, hat, and shoes, I was walking around the front of the school when a group of, might I say, unique looking individuals, stopped me and asked if I was in the band. Honestly, I didn't know whether I should be sarcastic or polite since they were strangers. I went with the latter of the two because there were 5 of them and I wasn't sure if they were the fighting type. I know I sure wasn't.

They complimented my odd hair style choice and I complimented what seemed like, the ring leader's hair. My hair was short, around shoulder length and half turquoise and half bice blue, while his was a very bright pink. I'm not sure how the topic came up, but they asked if I was going to the Pride Parade that weekend. I didn't have a plan to get there, but I did want to go. Suddenly, they asked me if I wanted to be in the parade completely taking me by surprise. Um, yes. Of course, I wanted to be in the parade. I gave one of them my information so they could contact me for where to meet them when the time came.

Fast forward to pride. I didn't know what to wear, I've never been to a pride parade, I didn't have a single clue what it was going to be like. Eventually, I just threw on a tie-dye t-shirt that I liked and my favorite pair of grey jeans and called it a look.

I got to the ring leader, Josh's, house where everyone was meeting up for us to all ride together to the parade. I was nervous and didn't know how to act, I wasn't used to making new friends, I was never any good at it in my opinion. So, I stayed quiet 90% of the time and just listened to them talk. Doing so, I learned that they lost their float to a higher bidder and that we weren't going to walk in the parade anymore, so that was kind of a bust.

Cramming 6 people in a small car was fairly difficult, but we pushed through and got to pride. We were walking along where the floats were lined up and Josh noticed someone in the line that he recognized. After they talked for a while and he explained how he lost the float, they offered for us to just walk with them since all they were doing was throwing necklaces at people behind the barriers. It was about being in the parade nonetheless so I didn't care what I was doing.

Once it was our turn to start walking, I had a rush of anxiety and adrenaline pumping through every vein in my body. I wanted to back out and hide as well as run to the front and just live. The entire walk was about 3 miles and I just stayed on my phone and recorded the people screaming behind the barriers. Is this what it feels like to be famous? Maybe not. But seeing hundreds of thousands of people screaming happily about something I was a part of just triggered something in me in a good way.

Once the walk was over, Josh and I split from the others (he's gay by the way, I forgot to mention that) and we walked around for a while. Some time passes and the sun is going down, we all agree to meet up at a Subway by a restaurant that charges way too much for average tasting shakes.

After meeting up, Josh and his friends get into an argument about something and don't really go back to normal for the entire rest of the night. All of us were walking to go find a place to call our ride when they all stop to talk.

I felt lightheaded so I sat down on a little sidewalk stump with rails to lean up against. As I'm sitting down, someone from the other side of the rail about 4 feet away yells, "you slut!" Everyone turns to look at him and he's looking at me. He's obviously intoxicated and makes his way over to us as he's holding onto others who weren't exactly sober themselves. Once he's by us, he stands next to me and apologizes profusely for yelling what he did. He claimed that he thought I had fallen down drunk. I know you're probably confused, well then why did he call you that? It's not really what he said, it's how he said it really. It was more of like "oh my god!" In gay language if you will.

When he comes over to us, he moves himself over to me and says "I like you, I'm gonna stand by you." and he does. Behind me in the same railing that I was leaning up against, on my left was now the very big, strange, gay man and my right was Josh. It was dark outside, there were clubs open, people (mainly a part of the LGBTQ+) walking everywhere, I shouldn't have been in that environment that late. I was a freshman at the time while the people I was with, were sophomores and juniors, so I was the youngest one.