Idlewild

by James Frankie Thomas

(It’s amazing what some adults will tell you if you just let them talk.)

I’d so looked forward to delivering lines like “My lord, you know I love you” and “I am your own forever,” but when I did so I heard my own voice, shrill and pink, and wanted to weep over the wrongness of it.

I was a person whose life was ruled by the fear of making someone mad.

Maybe, I thought, this was just how it felt to have a cool gay friend group. Maybe it was always this exhausting and destabilizing. Maybe, in that sense, it was like being in love.

I was suddenly overwhelmed by how big other people’s lives were, and how little I knew about them at any given moment.

That was why I’d loved her: I was so excited to be gay, and she was the only one who really got that.

I regret who I was back then. At the same time, I don’t know if I’ll ever be happy in the same way again. And I don’t know what to do with that.