Saturday’s Light Up the Night demonstrations were designed specifically to blend with the holiday season. Quiet candlelight vigils were appropriate for the peaceful spirit of the winter holidays, and the gatherings were located at major shopping centers because, hey, we’re no dummies.

The Los Angeles vigil was aimed at the Hollywood and Highland shopping complex, famous for hosting the Oscars once a year, lavish retail stores, and the people who stand out front wearing unauthorized movie costumes so tourists can have their pictures taken with Almost Jack Sparrow and Is That Supposed To Be Big Bird?

We met at the nearby Methodist church to drop off supplies for the food drive and get lit up. (No, no – just the candles.) I got there just as volunteer training was ending, and a friendly woman pounced on me. (No, no – just with friendliness.) She quickly relieved me of the little bag of food and toiletries I’d brought, then asked if I wanted to volunteer.

“Um,” I said with exactly the sort of scintillating repartee you can expect when you meet me in person. She explained that they could use a few more people, training or no, and within seconds I was equipped with a green armband and that special low-grade panic you get in the pit of your stomach when you know that people are going to start asking you questions to which you do not have the answers.

Several people at the event had the recommended “Second-Class Citizen” T-shirts, but for the rest of us there were handy bumper stickers, available for a $1 donation. Asking a stranger to slap a bumper sticker onto your back is an odd act of trust, but it certainly breaks the ice when you do it.

Once we were all looking fine in the candlelight with our white knots and bumper stickers, it was time to set off, walking an L-shaped route that went down Highland Avenue, along Hollywood Boulevard past the shopping complex, then across Hollywood and back the other way to retrace the L on the other side of the street.

I am sure that many funny, inspirational, and thought-provoking things happened on this walk, but I wouldn’t know because I wasn’t there. As an untrained volunteer, I was given a can’t-cause-too-much-harm post on the corner of Highland and Franklin near the end of the route. My job was to send the marchers in the right direction if they got to me and failed to notice that just across the street was the enormous church where they’d started. I am proud to report that no one barreled up Highland and into the Hollywood Bowl on my watch.

I walked over to my post and took position a polite distance from the homeless woman who had already set up shop there. The route had several street crossings with long lights on it, so I had some time to think before the head of the line got to me. About half an hour, in fact. With a lot of traffic going by. And the sign that explained what I was doing on my back, where no one could see it.

I soon realized that when you’re walking in a group of people with candles, you look like a peaceful demonstrator with deep and reasonable convictions. When you are standing alone on a high-traffic corner with a candle, you look like you might be in a cult. At one point I looked over at the homeless woman and realized that she had carefully increased her distance from me. Cars zoomed past, the occupants occasionally craning their necks to try to figure out what flavor and degree of crazy I was.

At last the marchers got to me, smiling and nodding at my candle and armband. I pointed out the obvious correct direction and pressed the crosswalk button, useful at last. Now the cars going past could see what was up and honked their support. The walkers, chilly but happy, moved on across the street for a second lap.

An old man who crossed the other way leaned in to me as his confidant. “I told them God made us Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve,” he said as though it were the cleverest, most original thing that’s been said since the Algonquin Round Table broke up. He started to laugh at his own trenchant wit, then stopped and walked away when he realized that I was holding a candle and wearing a white knot too. The opposition thus far? Is not impressing me with their mental agility.

Another bunch of walkers came up and crossed the street, and then another. And then finally it was just me and one straggler who just missed the cross light with his group. He introduced himself as a local minister, nodded at something that might have been support honking and might have just been busy intersection honking, and then he too leaned in to say something in confidence.

“This was a mistake,” he said, holding his candle and smiling resignedly. I asked what he meant, and he noted that we were in a fairly reliably friendly neighborhood, which was true of all the anti-Prop 8 campaigning and demonstrating he’d been to, and that even then we tended to stay huddled together. He said he didn’t think we’d make any real progress until we were willing to spread out into neighborhoods where we were less welcome.

He made a tiny joke to make sure I knew that he was both gay and not a threat, and then the light changed and he went off before I could ask whether he meant that we wouldn’t make any progress until we were willing to do outreach in areas that were less liberal, middle-class, and whitebread, or whether he meant that we wouldn’t make any progress until we’re willing to get beaten up over this.

But it gave me something to think about while I waited for the walkers to come around again.

And waited.

Cars went by or sat at the infernally long traffic light, the occupants staring at me and my candle. One couple rolled down the window and called me over to ask what I was doing. I explained, realizing as I did that ending with “A bunch of marchers are going to be here soon,” sounds like a lie, and kind of a lame one at that. They said “Oh,” and I went back to my post.

Half an hour went by with no marchers. They seemed to be taking their time.

Was I willing to get beaten up over this? I think so. There’s no way to really tell until that moment comes. But I was certainly proving my willingness to look unbalanced.

Forty minutes had gone by. No walkers. Were they caught up in some sort of Saturday night traffic snarl? Had they been seduced by the shimmering allure of Hot Topic? Maybe they were all getting their picture taken with Seen Better Days Chewbacca.

Finally, a gold-armbanded organizer jogged across the street to me and gave me a hug. “Hi,” he said, “I couldn’t bear to see you standing out here anymore.”  Turned out my part of the route had been edited out on the fly.

Oh. Okay.

We walked back to the church and set up candles on the steps for the wrapup. We learned that our smallish but hardy group of a few hundred people had raised 800 pounds of food with the drive, which was pretty satisfying. The organizers promised more events, some just as peaceful and some “more confrontational,” and then gave us a firm and rousing sendoff.

I turned in my armband and joined the file of people walking back toward Hollywood and Highland, this time in a non-illuminating capacity. I was in an odd mood, trying to figure out what, other than the food drive, we’d accomplished. Maybe proving our determination to keep moving forward (or, in my case, to continue standing still) was enough.

There will be more demonstrations, peaceful and otherwise, but in the meantime we were all off to preparations for the winter holidays (I hear everyone has a straight cousin) and to make plans and resolutions for the New Year. We can make some real good happen with a lot of determination and some help from Dame Fortune. Let’s hope 2009 is the year we all get lucky. (No, no – just politically.) (Oh, hell. The other way too.)

Best wishes for the New Year to us all.

Ali Davis is a writer and performer in Los Angeles.