You Know Me Well

by Nina LaCour

A small masterpiece of handcrafted obliviousness, delivered with sincerity.

“Are you sure?” I ask. She looks me in the eye and says, “Never.”

there are no true beginnings in life—there’s always something that came before

“You can’t keep it inside,” Violet offers. “Or maybe I can’t keep it at all,” I tell her. “Maybe it was never really mine in the first place.”

What’s happening to us—the decisions we’re making and not making, the things we can control and the things that we can’t—they are huge. And people can choose to forget how it was for them, or they can remember. They can half-listen to us and roll their eyes when we leave because we’re young and we have no fucking clue what we’re doing. Or they can actually listen, and they can think about themselves when they were like us, and maybe we can bring some pieces of them back.” And now my eyes are welling up, my hands are trembling. “Because we lose it,” I say. “We grow up and we lose ourselves. Sometimes when my favorite songs are on I have to stop what I’m doing and lie down on my carpet and just listen. I feel every word they’re singing. Every note. And to think that in twenty years, or ten years, or five, even, I might hear those same songs and just, like, bob my head or something is horrible. Then I’m sure I’ll think that I know more about life, but it isn’t true. I’ll know less.

“The heart is a treacherous beast.” “But it means well.”

“What they never tell you is that it’s actually the friendship part that’s harder. Kissing is easy. Kissing has its own politics, but at the end of the day, it’s kissing. It’s the real stuff—the being-part-of-each-other’s-lives piece of it—” “—being close to twins without being twins—” “Yes! That is both the challenge and the reward.”

Tomorrow we will line up along Market Street, shoulder to shoulder. The Dykes on Bikes will be back to kick everything off, and the mayor will be there, and all of the gay cops and firefighters. The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence will be in full drag, lip-synching to some Katy Perry song. There will be floats and classic cars, and chants and songs and tears. There will be old people who fought hard for what we all have now. There will be babies who will only know a country where everyone can marry. There will be signs reminding us of how far we still have to go. We’ll watch everyone go by, and our hearts will swell with the sight of it.