GAH!

You know how when you somehow decide it would be an awesome, merry idea to send gushing fan letters on Instagram to some of the people you just saw on Broadway and you try to make your effusive gushing really clever because that’s a Very Special Skill you have and in your delusion your unbounded cleverness will make the Broadway people so flattered and touched and amused that OF COURSE they’ll read your gushing fan letters to their entire and entirely grateful casts who will probably hopefully maybe all respond to you with notes that are effusively thankful and not at all guarded because they’re trying to gauge whether or not to put out restraining orders on you—which just so happens to be something you literally joked about in your fan letters in an attempt to be Very Specially Clever—and the morning after you’ve sent your gushing fanboy letters you wake in a clammy-skin gray-sweat mortifying epiphany about the horrors you’ve unleashed and now you’re afraid to open Instagram in the mortal fear that your Broadway people HAVE in fact responded and you suddenly realize that the last thing in the world you want is to see what they might have to say to you either way because you’d actually rather instead be pushed by judgy cool kids into a volcano of feral she-wolves as swarms of angry syphilis bees eat your eyes?

Me neither.

I often write little notes to both friends and total strangers on Instagram when I have something (hopefully) interesting to say ...

all with no expectation that they’ll ever write me back, which is good because they never do. EXCEPT I SENT A NOTE TO DREAMY BROADWAY STAR JASON DANIELEY TODAY TO CONGRATULATE HIM ON A HALF-MARATHON PR AND HE JUST RESPONDED AND BASICALLY I JUST TALKED SHOP WITH JASON DANIELEY ABOUT RUNNING THE NEW YORK MARATHON AND HOLY SHIT SOMEONE FETCH ME MY SMELLING SALTS AND HEART MEDICATION.

Great. Now MY phone has been exposed to HIS end-stage syphilis.

It’ll no doubt start yelling at the pudding and deporting the Instagrams soon.

When I bold-caps-reverse-Comic-Sans MY staggeringly insincere condolences over the death of someone who has devoted his life to serving our country, I always end them with an exclamation point too

Oh—and I ALWAYS INCLUDE A PHOTO OF MYSELF.

When your lie says “cute pic that our friends just sent us”

but your reflective glasses say “this is a selfie because we have no friends"

I hate to brag, but ...

I didn’t really know anybody by the time the first pride parade happened soon after I moved to Chicago

So I went by myself to watch it. And, standing among thousands and thousands of cheering, smiling, happy, proud people who were watching with groups of friends and waving at other friends who squeezed by on the crowded sidewalks, I never felt more alone.

It was actually so devastating in my mind that pride weekend literally filled me with dread for the next 15 years I lived in Chicago.

I did notice that first year that the people dancing and waving on the floats looked very happy—and they didn’t have to be surrounded by friends or even anybody as they enjoyed the parade from their glorified perches. So I made up my mind that I needed to make the connections to get myself on a float by the next pride parade.

As I slowly—finally!—made Chicago friends and watched the next few parades with them, I still harbored an irrational, unshakable dread that I’d lose them—or they’d actually leave me—and I’d be alone all over again in the crowds. So I kept trying to figure out how to get myself on a float.

Then I joined the Chicago Gay Men’s Chorus. And we marched in the parade! But not on a float. And I very very stupidly decided to wear my rollerblades and they hurt and I was bad at stopping so I kept running into people and I was so miserable I had to hobble home the moment it was over so I couldn’t hang out and celebrate with anyone afterward so as far as I’m concerned the whole experience didn’t count and I don’t want to talk about it.

Then! Finally! I got on a float! And let me tell you: Though standing in a Speedo sucking in your abs and holding on for dear life on a lurching, frequently stopping vehicle technically sucks all the fun out of it, having hundreds of millions (in my fantasies my math says I have hundreds of millions of adoring fans so shut up) of people screaming and cheering for you is ALMOST as awesome as dancing and waving high on a moving platform where the cooling breezes are plenty, the jostling crowds are penned up on the sidewalks below you and the scenery changes by the second to keep everything interesting.

Plus you get to dance to your favorite disco hits.

I got myself onto many more floats for the rest of my years in Chicago. The weather was always perfect, my cheering, adoring fans swelled into the billions (shut up), and the joy and pride were always plenty. And my irrational dread—though never gone—was always in check.

Today is Chicago’s pride parade. My Facebook and Instagram feeds are filled with joyful, excited, rainbow-colored pictures of my Chicago friends and acquaintances already celebrating, and while I’m thrilled and proud to have (eventually) been a part of those traditions, our dramatically more subdued Cedar Rapids pride festival in two weeks is now WAY more my speed. And not my Speedo.

So I wish all of you celebrating pride in Chicago today—whether on the sidewalks or on a float—an awesome day and an awesome experience both personally and with everyone around you. I’ll be happily cleaning the garage—and no doubt dancing to my favorite disco hits—instead. And we all can’t stop the music.

Wow. Instagram sure has all my interests nailed after only a few weeks:

Random shirtless dudes being conspicuously muscular in the gym, answers to pressing questions about some girl’s curly leggo hair, a couple more random shirtless dudes but this time enjoying nature, ferocious dinosaurs outfitted in feathers and armor, a random shirtless dude who apparently knows how to fly, and my adorable and beloved husband Ethan Slater, who is currently starring on Broadway in the Spongebob musical. (Hi, Ethan! Call me.)