We are awakening each other to the beauty of the sight of bare breasted women in town, out in the streets, in all the local areas that we love most to live our lives. We are having parades to gather together with other women, men and kids who also want to live in a climate where bodies with breasts can be seen moving about in naked abandon, celebrating life euphorically, and expressing tenderness during all walks of life. Those who parade with me draw energies out of me that are only just beginning to find a place in this world. The parade forces me to get my body and ideas out and across to others in a form that is more adamant, more dynamic and insistent, to be more enthusiastically myself. I feel more myself at these events in the same way one usually feels more expressed with a lover than a stranger. The joyous appreciative gazes of those who surround us draw out our vigor, our ability to move orgasmically, our love of being absolutely still, of painting each other, touching each other, singing out to each other and also being people who really do have breasts.

This summer's first Breast Freedom Parade was different than that of earlier years in its size and forcefulness. About twenty five women, fifty men and a handful of kids participated in ways that often catapulted me into new ways of being, singing, moving, feeling a group spirit with more depth. A crop of women in their early twenties danced so wildly to our song that the event took on the feeling of a wave, drawing motion from itself in heaves and swells. It was great to see the youths of our parade take to the street and lead the swarm up several blocks, filling Telegraph Ave. from curb to curb with soul. And it was even better to feel the whole group quiet down immediately to listen when I asked them to answer me by making a vow to stand up for any woman in any town who wants to be breast free. All together the paraders made a vow to stand up and say, "Let them be Topfree!"

During this, the first parade of this season, I saw our culture shift into a place where strong-minded women were insistent on their own right to live with breasts out, each insistent for her own reasons. Women in their twenties, women in their forties, all pushing through the taboo against revealing breasts. Pushing against the fear of breast visibility can be hard work, grating and awkward work, requiring focus on goodwill toward others and a strong effort at communicating. I saw men and women involved in nonverbal communion, the kind that sends a psychic message of goodwill toward each others' bodies out across the airwaves, into and through each other. I envisioned women all over the country becoming able to carry inner confidence radiating through their warm glowing chests where all varieties of beautiful breasts become visible along with their faces. At the parade I saw an absence of shame, a shame that had been pushed into absolution, by sheer enthusiasm for oneself and the love of one's own body. "Before they rust or turn to dust, let them be Topfree," we sang and chanted and whispered bowing low to the ground in worship of the fleeting wonder, the magic, the sacred gift of having a body to dwell in at all.

The second event came two weeks later and began again in People's Park. We had smaller numbers this time which is often a welcomed thing. The group of people there got a chance to be even more tuned in to me and Nina, more willing to respond to our need to be danced with, sung to and attended to closely. Nina and I were the only women who started the parade with breasts exposed but we still wanted to feel the states of abandon and affections we had felt at Topfree events that had come before. Marty played his guitar as ferociously as ever, Bob and others in our X-plicit Players cast drew upon those in the parade for even more connection and responsiveness.

We called on every man there to come through for us, keep responding to our changes of emotion and motion by jumping into dance and play with us. We called on many friends all along the Ave. who are street vendors, street people, store owners, neighbors, stopping wherever we met them to get them to merge for moments with the festivities of the parade. It was a climactic way to visit and celebrate the changing of the Ave. into a place where breast freedom lives again. All along the parade route, women appeared to take off their shirts and dance with us, men turned away from their work to frolic for awhile, merchants stood in doorways to greet us, wave, watch and enjoy.

I love the second parade because it blended the feeling of erotic fervor together with a downhome ease of motion, a slowness and flexibility that allows everyone to stop immediately to take each other in. This is perhaps the aspect of breast freedom that I love the most. That is the way in which has become a means for being more open and available to involvement with each person on the street. It adds strength to the powers of concentration and ability within people to see each other clearly, commune in new ways. People are more exposed to us when our breasts are out. Their spirits leap out at us and their hopes are raised. I never witness so much obvious happiness in people's faces, words and mannerisms as I do when topfree. The communications we have are more instinctual, childlike and deeply human. It is with great humility that I say that I need to, I must live within a world that can encompass this custom, and I demand the right to it.