I don’t remember “seeing” any gay people in person growing up. I had an inkling that maybe there were other kids “like me” around, that they existed—the sense that perhaps a friend and I shared a secret, whether it was the feeling of just not fitting in or the deeper truth of growing up queer in an environment that told us not to be, but neither of us ever spoke of it. What I do remember, most vividly, are the words fag and faggot and sissy—descriptors for boys who were different, feminine, soft—being tossed around in the locker room and in the hallways. I dodged them daily.
