Straight

by Seth King

what really is masculinity, and why does it seem to be so fragile?

As kids we’d been sold a brave, thrilling version of adulthood – you can wake up whenever you want! You can eat ice cream in the morning! No more school! But when we actually threw ourselves into the world, we realized growing up wasn’t real. Adults were just large children who hadn’t figured anything out yet, and the world was just as much of a crapshoot as it was before.

Society only accepts gays like Boy George or whoever, who make themselves into freak shows and willingly play the jester, or ones who try to blend in and act straight. Why is Neil Patrick Harris famous right now? For playing a womanizer on TV. You can either become a spectacle or put on a business suit, but you have to pick one. People don’t know what to do with guys who don’t fit into any kind of box.”

In fact, all the sex we’ve been having doesn’t feel vulgar or like overkill at all – in fact, it doesn’t even feel like sex. It just feels like an extension of our joy.

“It means you take up all the space inside me, and I’m with you right now, and I want to be with you as often as possible, maybe forever.”

I wonder if he knows the strobe lights are jealous of the colors in his soul; I wonder if

He is inside me, he is splashed all over the walls like Technicolor vomit, he is painting the inside of my skull like a demented watercolorist.

There’s nothing to tell them, anyway. My life is Kansas.

Because love does not exist between men and women. Love does not exist between blondes and brunettes. Love does not exist between Caucasian people and Asian people. Love exists between humans.

In fact, the only thing that scares me about the word “straight” is living my life in a straight line, too terrified to jump off the beaten path and explore something that might light me up inside.

You don’t get to choose who you love in this world, but you do get to choose what you do about it.

don’t even care what it means for my identity anymore – maybe identity isn’t something you’re even born with, anyway. Maybe it’s something the world tries to create for you, forces onto your shoulders over the years as humanity’s judgment and dogma and incessant desire to label everyone whittles away at your bright bold soul until you are just another factory product. Maybe you have to choose for yourself – maybe we all have to choose.

He made me make sense to myself.