What I Know Now
Alan Quinn
My head was jammed up against a red metal locker. It felt cold against my face and my neck was turned
in a funny way that necks aren’t supposed to turn. An unforgiving hand just wouldn’t let up. Words like
“fag” and “queer” permeated the air, but my mind was humming so loudly I could barely hear them. I
kept waiting for his foot to connect. I was in a foreign place. I was in boy world: the gym locker room. I
had no friends there. I kept waiting for his foot to connect. I remember hoping that he’d kick me hard and
beat me until there wasn’t any life left in me.
I was still in the closet. The future was shapeless and black. Any conception of a happy future was nonexistent in my mind. I kept waiting for his foot to connect. The shame of my situation clung to me, closer
than my tightest pair of skinny jeans. It was sheer; through the shame you could see the skeleton of a
person I had become, without pride and barely clinging to life. The shame welled up from a fear of
revealing who I was to the world and disappointing it. Maybe if this boy kicked hard enough I could
escape the shame, float above my body and finally live in vibrant color. I kept waiting for his foot to
connect. I kept waiting for the fatal blow.
His foot never did come. Another boy, an older boy, picked up my attacker and told him to fuck off. Just
like that, it was over. I walked out of the locker room and soldiered on. I like to think of this moment as a
worm hole in my life. I had to go through it, right through the center, passing through the shame, the hurt,
and the unknowing in order to arrive at the current universe in which I reside. A complete alternate
reality. This moment gave me the courage to come out. I realized I wasn’t safe in the closet, I was
flaming; the bullies were going to kick me around regardless of whether or not I was being my authentic
self. The only thing I was hiding from back there behind last season’s Jimmy Choos was my own
happiness.
Survival got easier the moment that the deconstruction of my shame and the early conception of my
personal pride began. For me, the most glorious element of pride is that it isn’t something that can be
taught, it’s innate and yet also elusive. It finds you. It walks right in to your life, pronounces, “we’re not
going to live like this anymore” and then you don’t. My pride runs through me. It shows on pride
weekend every June when I don Daisy Dukes and more glitter than humanly imaginable. However, that is
just one piece because my pride isn’t just for my homosexuality; instead it’s for the uniqueness of my
entire being. My pride is as integral a part of me as my brown eyes or my attraction to men.
Absolutes and categories no longer hinder my thoughts because they are the notions of a man defined by
cowardice, not by pride. Categories make the variance of life seem easier to stomach, but they are really
just a gross oversimplification. They’d have you believe that I’m a hero and my attacker is a villain. That
this can’t coexist with that. Straight can’t coexist with gay. Instead, I see sexuality, and the world as a
whole, as a great spectrum. Above all we are defined by the fact that we are human, bound together
tightly by the human spirit. At our core we all want to know what we say, what we do and who we are,
matters. When I look in the mirror today I see a million different things. I see glitter. I see compassion. I
see fabulous clothes. I see brown hair. I see a sliver of humanity. I see pride, glowing brighter and more
lasting than anything else. I feel joy in the fluidity of humanity and the unknowing of what my reflection
will look like tomorrow. There will definitely be pride, but it’s hard to say beyond that. Maybe blue hair?