Masked men, dressed as extravagant women, and women as herculean men, were loitering, awaiting the start of the carnival parade.  He noticed then a tall and broad figure in dress, heels, and floppy hat round a corner in the wide and sturdy gait of a giant of a man capable of a debutante’s grace.  That’s when the parade began.  The “women” and “men” started to fawn over and “compete” for this masked figure, but his own joy lay more in watching that leading figure stay upright in high heels that were here or there getting snagged in cracks in the concrete.  Each foot trembled at each footfall, but nothing in the body betrayed that strain.  Perhaps the face did, he thought, but it was behind a mask, and perhaps the body would too were it not an athlete’s.  He heard this thought in his own voice before it then mingled in his mind with the fatigued voice of his long dead grandfather saying, as he often would, All you need to get a lead in the carnival of life is an athlete’s stamina and a good mask to hide behind.  This time, he took it to mean, “Don’t show the pain.”  There wasn’t a flicker of it to be seen on the figure leading the parade down the boulevard, while the hovering “men” and “women” still fawned and the parade onlookers applauded.