I’ve always wanted to call myself queer.
The first time I heard the word “queer,” I fell in love. I was about six, and it was one of our spelling words for the week.
At the time, though the word was gaining ground as an insult to gay people, to a child’s brain it only had one meaning: weird.
I was definitely weird. When my friends were spending their time playing Hide and Go Seek, or using the empty plot next to my house for a barely-legal game of baseball (seriously, we changed all the rules because we could), I was often curled up in my imagination, watching the cheerleaders on Fear Street spew split pea soup, or pretending I was Jessica at Sweet Valley High, or sneaking looks into more adult authors that I wasn’t supposed to read, like Stephen King and Dean Koontz. I loved baseball and my friends, but when you love so many things, as I did, you have to divide your time wisely. I occasionally forgot there was a world outside my books.
I dressed all in black, all of the time, but rarely owned black shoes until I finally talked my dad into a semi-girly pair of combat boots from Payless. It wasn’t goth. I loved to watch the goths in high school during lunch. I loved how comfortable they were in their Victorian clothes and heavy makeup. I wished I had big enough cojones to do something that drastic with my wardrobe and makeup. Not necessarily goth, but something. Read more…