I stayed inside it anyway. It was the 2000s. I lived in a Republican household, and although California is a progressive haven for so many, being a queer teen was not cute. When classmates weren’t relentlessly making fun of me, others took pity and tried to correct how I walked. Or how I talked. It felt like an era of sameness: Abercrombie and American Eagle ruled. All the kids on television were white, and that was mostly true at my school, too. To fit in meant to embody a specific archetype that I desperately wanted but knew I’d never be. I was greasy and weird; I couldn’t dress myself; I didn’t have jock friends or look like one either.
I tried to fit in anyway. I joined rowing and water ski team — amid, of course, symphony, yearbook, theater, and dance.