Joy and nakedness at San Francisco’s Dyke March: Phyllis Christopher’s best photograph

The march is like our Christmas - the biggest night of the year, where women celebrate half naked and anything goes'

In San Francisco, the night before the annual Pride parade is reserved for the Dyke March, a celebration of lesbian life throughout the city. It was like our Christmas - the biggest night of the year - and half of us would be so hungover we wouldn't make it to Pride the next day.

I remember getting a call from an editor at On Our Backs, a lesbian magazine run by women that billed itself as offering entertainment for the adventurous lesbian". It was a bedrock of the lesbian community - one of the few ways to communicate with one another, and to celebrate sex and educate each other about it at a time when Aids had brought so much devastation to queer communities. The editor wanted me to shoot a kiss-in, but the tone of her voice sounded almost guilty - like she couldn't quite bring herself to ask me to work on the biggest party night of the year. But to me, it was the most fun I could imagine.