Nail Polish

I liked being gay better when it was dangerous.

There were higher stakes. Wearing nail polish was scary. It made the straight boys uncomfortable and their reactions were electrifying. The hate and the intolerance thrown back at me for my flamboyance was exhilirating. And horrifying, obviously. Matthew Shepard was tortured and tied to a fence and left to die. It’s just like me to push to find some heroic in that episode and that gesture but it falls flat and tragic, only that. To upset and piss them off, though. That let me know that I was on the right path.

Being gay now is so much easier and the complacency of it is boring. Boring is not what I struggled for.

I’m happy and supportive that it’s a more accepting world out there for queer kids coming up. It’s clearly an old person’s perspective to say that kids have it easier now, I get that. To shut my old self up, I honestly don’t think kids have it easy. There will always be that period in a queer kids life, the coming out process, that’s painful and torturous and undeniably difficult. It was so complicated and hard for me when I was younger. I put it off for as long as I possibly could. It brings up shame and horror and a vulnerability and the crux of it happens just that once. In the end, for me, it was a small price to pay for a life of luxury.

I’ve always been a provocative kid, I’ve made a life out of it. I look first and foremost for an adverse reaction, I want to bristle hairs, I seek to offend, I’m looking to piss people off. I don’t know why I’m this way. Has anyone said that flattery’s boring? It just may be to me. I’m not interested in being popular, I will always prefer sitting with the underdogs. I appreciate fighting for my cause in a sea of discourse. I love championing something unorthodox, something controversial, something not liked.

I talk about it a lot in my book. There are so many examples of directions I could have gone that would have been safer and easier. I chose the hard road not because it was contrary, but the scenery of that road is way more interesting than the one on the easy street. Easy street is for the non adventurous. Easy street has no grit. There aren’t potholes, there aren’t unexpected turns and surprises, there’s a safeness and predictability that’s boring and pedestrian. It’s not for me.

The count revealed that my people, my tribe, were in the minority. That feels so bad and then after a beat, there’s something about being in the minority that I’m clinging to. Maybe there’s some merit to it. We will work harder, we will shout louder, we will make ourselves heard in ways that we hadn’t before. The time for agendas is now. What’s your agenda, what’s your plan?

Not to belittle the consequence of our stupid nation. Fuck that man and fuck the people that voted for him. Fuck their stance and their stupid, stupid selves. ‘Ooooooh he’s crazy,’ the idiots say. Crazy to them is to paint yourself blue and wear a clown nose and a curly wig in a crowd at a football game. You’ll never come close to crazy, you fucking morons, you give disservice to the very word. Have you ever heard of Johanna Went?

Your hate, your misogyny, your fear, your racism, it’s simple, it’s bland and it’s the color and smell of the majority. Followers and gobblers, simpleton consumers, morons who can’t think for themselves, you’ll never be anything but a bully’s shadow.

My color and my tribe we still paint a path that’s as varied and unique in its tribituaries as the different colors of the dumb ass rainbow we chose to represent us. We chose that spectrum because of the differences, not the sameness. My difference is one of a voice and a clarity that shines and leads. It doesn’t follow, it sets a tone, it doesn’t blend in. With my love for me and for us and for our struggle my tone will prevail and my pitch will be heard. I’m going to publish my book. I’m going to write a musical. I’m going to live and love as a revolutionary and I will never be part of a mix. Just watch.

Love you all.

-RB