They Peed in the Sink

Way back in early 1973 two things happened to me. I got a new job driving a small delivery truck for a shoe company, and I got involved with the Chicago Gay Alliance. The shoe company sold not only shoes but shoe repair supplies, equipment, and leather. One of the perks of the job was that I got to take the delivery truck home for my personal use. It was a 1971 International Harvester Travelall. I got involved with the Chicago Gay Alliance one night when I saw them listed in the hippie newspaper, The Chicago Seed. I remember that I had The Waltons on the television and that show had made me feel melancholy. I wanted to talk to somebody so I picked up the phone and dialed the Gay Alliance hotline number.  The guy who answered the phone invited me to come on over to the Gay Alliance Center and meet some people. The Chicago Gay Alliance was in a house, a stone's throw from the Cabrini Green Projects. It was a decrepit old place at the edge of the ghetto. Inside were what appeared to be a bunch of hippies who peed in the bathroom sink because the toilet didn't work. I loved it. If I walked into a place like that now, I'd run away screaming. In June of 1973 my job driving the delivery truck and the Chicago Gay Alliance crossed paths. I was asked if the CGA could use 'my' truck to lead the Gay Pride Parade. That sounded like fun so I said yes. We put a loud speaker on the roof, and plastered banners across the sides of the truck. It was the first gay pride parade I had ever seen or been in. It was late Sunday night after the parade that a sudden fear took hold of me. There were a few television cameras at the parade and newspapers covered it. I thought for sure that I'd lose my job if the boss saw his truck in a gay parade. Luckily for me, television did not cover the event in detail, if they covered it at all. But the newspapers did. I was terrified. Sure enough, when I got to work on Monday morning the Chicago Tribune and Sun-Times were laying on the counter where the boss usually left them. And there I was in the paper. A blurry photo of the Chicago Gay Pride Parade including my boss's truck. He never said a word about it. Either he didn't recognize the truck that he had paid for, or he didn't care.