We have secrets… I have hidden the rivers of crimson-colored pain and thundering anguish within a private bookcase of literature that came from the Underground Railroad through medium-sized water pipes standing in my cranium walls.

The struggle continues… Mommy’s probably wondering why I downgraded my sizes in clothing and my sister’s probably wondering why I have a thing for nail polish. I caught Maw Maw before she left for work… dancing to the 90’s dance sensations from my radio… it was Right Said Fred a
nd I bet she don’t know who Right Said Fred is or that they are gay rights activists in the more acceptable U.K.

Rolling stone father is on a Indiana Jones type quest to discover why feminine tendencies run through my personalities and my God-fearing auntee is questioning that supermodel strut in my walk after that time she called me a sissy that summer in Texas.

We have secrets… There is truth to the way my brain absorbs. There is truth to why I have made confessions on microphones and letting that strawberry shake on the dance floor instead of practicing my own book of revelation on the living room sofa.

Mommy found pictures of me and an ex-boyfriend on a Sunday morning and called me nasty. Maw Maw criticizes transsexualism through an MSNBC documentary. Auntee once said that the fate of gay people leads to AIDS in Sunday School and I wanted to spit my own scripture in her face and leave… I remember she called someone a dyke.

We have secrets… They don’t know that I mentally left the Baptist church when I was 16, that I won’t be my father’s son until he starts acting like my father, that I have taken a bite of new kinds of fruits and swam in eclectic oceans, that I re-baptized myself cuz the water didn’t cleanse me when the preacher dunked me in that arctic pool when I was nine years old, and I took off that crucifix and banded a rainbow on my index finger cuz I’m not ashamed to be who I am, and one thing I’m not… is a Christian.

I’ve been on this pancake mission since the first of my escapades was written down in my book of life. Only 18 years when God ejaculated his pure semen to crate me, this tiny premature seed that has flourished into a surround sound, Technicolor, high definition… rainforest, trying to break free from the black and white lines of parental control. Ever since I declared that I am pleased with my human composition, I’ve been waiting for the right time to get family to understand why I have been an excruciating pain in the arse.

My mommy found a copy of The Advocate with Lawrence King on the cover, the teenager slain from his gayness, went into my booksack and found a Day of Silence shirt and discovered boy posters under my bed… she makes it seem that privacy should have no substance in my life and the consistency of our relationship slowly emasculates at a lower speed than a snail’s movements.

I come home in the evenings and it’s funny that they don’t know how the past six years have been for me cuz my mind is the perfect example of what happens when you grow up in a home full of obsessive compulsive females and in a church where you are fork-fed beliefs, and push through an identity crisis jam-packed with identity crises that include your sexuality, religious faith, gender role, body image, social anxiety, low self-esteem, and given the opportunities two times to contemplate suicide, thinking about a stab to the chest with the blade that resides in the kitchen because the Bible tells you that you are abnormal and voices in free speech alleyways say AIDS is your destiny.

This is for queer colored boys who have considered suicide when the rainbow became enough but realized they had something better than potential.

This is for the
red boy
orange boy
yellow boy
green boy
blue boy
purple boy
or boys who bleed going both ways…
All humming the melody of “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough”, holding hands to show empowerment… This is for us who say screw the world and screw the two strikes of race and sexual orientation cuz they don’t mean a thing, for us who go through the struggle of believing that hate does not have to be a family value, and we don’t have to carry closets all our lives.

The living room sofa is waiting and acceptance doesn’t come overnight, but who we are is who we are is who we are, and hopefully, family will graduate from ignorance and believe that too.