One Page #15

When I came out dad was watching TV. When I came out it was storming outside and the trees were bending at impossible angles. When I came out I was dressed all in corduroy. When I came out I was thirteen years old. I never told anyone I just pinned a rainbow button to my lapel and let people guess. No one asked. I wore it every day for seven years. It was as much a part of me as my spiky hair and the dimple in my chin. When I came out I wore a bow tie that was blue with red polka dots. When I came out there was a twinge of anger in my eye that never went away. The skin along my arm is pale and crinkles where my elbow bends. The veins stick out blue. My eyes glimmer blue. The ocean waves drown blue. When I came out I painted my nails black. I wore a black shirt with silver cuff links that had been my grandfathers. I found them when he died and kept them hidden in a box. When my grandmother asked if anyone had seen them I didn’t say anything. I looked at her wide-eyed. Now she is dead and no one remembers that they were missing and so I wear them every day. They don’t match my bowtie but I don’t care. When I came out both of my grandparents were dead, and it is a good thing because they would have died if they found out. They were so patriotic that their house was decorated entirely in red and blue. I was surprised the cuff links weren’t red and blue too. My bow tie was, but that was only a coincidence. I wasn’t patriotic. I wanted to move to Australia where I could paint the koala bears’ nails in rainbow colors. My first girlfriend was Asian and my parents didn’t like that. They never said so. But as soon as we started going out my parents stuck a flag in our front lawn like a beacon sending warning signals in flashes of red and blue. This wasn’t a coincidence. They didn’t know she was my girlfriend, even when I kissed her so long in the living room right in front of them. She had a lip ring and it felt so good against my teeth. She liked my bow tie and I liked the red scar that she had on her wrist. I never asked about it though, but I thought about how it would be funny if she wore a blue bracelet right next to her red scar, and then she would be patriotic too. That wouldn’t be a coincidence. When I came out I bought black army boots because I thought that was what I was supposed to do. But they gave me blisters and my heels turned red and scabbed over. I kept picking at the scabs and they would bleed red and soak into my blue socks. This was a coincidence. I don’t wear the boots anymore. I wear sneakers, and now my feet don’t hurt. But other things hurt. And the day is blue.