Mrs. Twist Goes to a Parade
For the June 2012 Pride Challenge at Brokeback Slash.
Mrs. Twist Goes to a Parade
Cheyenne, Wyoming June 2012
She sure never expected to be doing this.
Didn’t expect to be standing in a crowd of people watching a parade full of rainbow flags and smiling men and women walking arm in arm.
Not that Pride in Cheyenne was any great shakes. It was a small town, and Wyoming was conservative. After that poor boy got murdered in 1998, there was more awareness of gay issues and more tolerance. At least she hoped there was.
But it sure wasn’t San Francisco or Chicago. There were some guys with their shirts off, and a few drag queens, but nothing really flamboyant like you’d see in a big city.
For which she was devoutly grateful.
No, in Cheyenne Pride brought out a couple of hundred people at best, a small parade that ended with hot dogs and hamburgers at the Lions Park Gazebo. Nothing too scary about that.
She waited in the hot sun for the University of Wyoming Spectrum group to appear, a little nervous about being here even though she wouldn’t have missed it for the world. It was Jack’s first time marching, and he’d asked her to come.
His dad had never been able to accept that Jack was gay. Part of the reason she’d divorced him the year after Jack announced he was gay. Jack was so brave, to tell his parents a thing like that at fourteen, and to not back down when his father told him it was a phase.
The PFLAG group marched by, middle-aged men and women in shorts and running shoes. Then a couple of church groups. The Episcopal church had a slogan she liked. “All means all.”
And then Jack and his friends walked by. Some of them had on face paint, but most of them looked like any other college kid in jeans and a hoodie. Jack was having the time of his life, waving to the crowd with a big grin on his face. He darted out of formation to give her a hug, then rejoined the parade.
She’d cried when Jack told her he was gay, not because she had a problem with it, but because she knew it would make his life more difficult. But he was doing so well, she couldn’t waste time on fear.
Jack had big plans. He wanted to get out of Wyoming when he graduated with his nursing degree, maybe move to northern California. He talked about her moving with him, of how much she would like living near the ocean.
That would all turn out as the good Lord intended, she supposed.
She followed the parade the few blocks to the park, and sat down with her plate of food and chatted with some other people who were obviously parents. She’d brought her camera, and she got a great picture of her son looking utterly joyful, throwing his head back and laughing as two men in drag walked behind him. He was so handsome, and she was so proud of him.
Her son was happy. He was free. He was his own man.
What mother could ask for more?
Author’s note: I don’t know if Cheyenne has an actual parade for Pride, but they do have an event in June. I wanted this story to be set in the biggest town in Wyoming.
The man in the picture is my son.
