“What, no drag queens in sarees?” Fiaz is shocked. The other desis following behind are also conventionally dressed, many in jeans and T-shirts. “I thought there’d be more dhoom-dhaam today. Where’s the baraat?”

Though there is music playing—Ishq ki galiyon mein aake ghoom, dhoom machaale dhoom machaale dhoom—appropriately from the movie Dhoom, the dancing, a mix of Bollywood twerking and bhangra, is energy-deprived, as Fiaz comments, from the wait to get started and the long march in the noon sun. “Nobody’s even trying anymore.”

He calls out to one of the dancers who signals him to join them. He looks to Seema for permission, sheepish and guilty.

“Go, you know you want to,” Seema says. “I’ll just go home.”

Fiaz hesitates, but she pushes him toward the float, and he doesn’t need a second urging. He climbs over the fence with a nimble hop, and with one backward wave—“Fuck Pierre!”—he races toward the already moving Trikone contingent, falling in with the dancers.

Seema watches until his graceful form passes from sight, twirling and skipping down the road blithely, his hips circle-shaking expertly in tight eights, his arms snaking to the music, the morning’s despair seemingly dispelled. Fiaz, she assumes, would just as easily get through his current patch of misery, he and Pierre patching up their differences like they usually do. If it were only as easy for her.

She leaves the parade, but instead of returning home, she wanders toward the assembly at the Civic Center. At Powell Square there is a small contingent of antigay protestors with megaphones. They boo, they chant, they bellow, as if to drown out the cheers from the parade, brandishing their banners and posters: God Hates Fags. Homosex Is Sin. Faggots Are Meant For Burning. Dykes Can Be Cured By Rape. America Is Doomed. A few paraders engage with them, and the two sides shout past each other, shaking fists and pumping placards in each other’s faces. One Brown protestor, in a white robe and lace cap—Turn To Islam (before it’s too late)—is harangued by both sides; Seema feels a bitter sympathy toward him.

Some gay couples deliberately provoke the protestors by sucking face in front of them. They remind Seema of her first kiss-in with Chloe. The memory stings: the old her from a decade ago would have joined them gleefully.

The crowd at the Civic Center is bigger than any Pride she’s seen. They seemed to have arrived from everywhere in the country, all sizes, all shapes, all colors, milling around, as if on a pilgrimage. There are the usual naked men and topless women, the wispy Radical Faeries and bearded Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, the glowing and glitter-studded muscular bodies, but she’s surprised by how tame the others look, as if the normal and the boring have all decided to come out finally. And unlike the earlier years, the area is overrun with couples. She’s never seen so many gay and lesbian couples before at Pride.