Sybil Bruncheon's “My Merry Memoirs”…LGBTQ Pride Parades of the Past - 1986.

Here's the cover of The NY Daily News from Monday, June 30th, 1986. At the time of the LGBTQ Pride Parade in 1986, even as I was headlining at the major clubs in NYC and around the country, I also happened to have been going through some serious misadventures involving a stock broker, the (now defunct!) brokerage house Thompson/McKinnon, a taxi cab accident, back due rent, and a major rent strike at the Ansonia! (talk about material for a memoir!)... and in the middle of all that drama there was the centennial of the Statue of Liberty with all the Tall Ships coming to town along with the President and foreign dignitaries to see it unveiled, newly refurbished and restored and with a brand new 24kt torch flame gleaming over the city. In the Pride Parade just days before the huge celebration on the 4th, I celebrated the centennial in my own way with my own "Liberty" outfit of gold lamé (by Cliff Boone and Morrie Breyer at A.Q.U.A.) and a custom-made torch (that actually lit up!). It was all great fun, and another triumphant parade for the LGBTQ community. But that's not the end of the story...  

The gloriously beautiful Monday morning after the parade, I had to face all the challenges of the rent strike, being broke, dealing with being swindled along with several other gullible guys, bills, deadlines, threats of eviction, blah, blah, blah, etc, etc. I knew I had to eat a good breakfast or I'd be nauseated the rest of the day with cramps, so I headed to the diner by my corner news stand!... and the nice Moroccan man behind the counter suddenly screamed gleefully at me pointing and waving a copy of the Daily News in front of a sidewalk full of staring commuters, "Derr! I tell you! I TELL YOU!! Derr is da lady! Derr is da LADY!!! You, meester! You ARE DA LADEEEE! Ha! HA! HAAA! YOU ARE DA LADEEEE!"...

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